The Object of Conservation: An Ethnography of Heritage Practice [1 ed.] 9781138655676, 9781138655683, 9781315622385

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Chapter 0: Introduction
The work of conservation
Situating conservation
Theorising objects in practice
Approaching conservation ethnographically
Note on the text
Note
Part I: People
Chapter 1: Present pasts
Re/valuing the past
Expertise in question
“Going deep with the paper”
“Change fatigue”
Ambivalent nostalgias
Crisis and continuity
Conclusion: shadowed by the past
Note
Chapter 2: Working from the past
Humility
Patience
Pragmatism
Restore or preserve?
Conclusion: working from the past
Note
Chapter 3: Organising knowledge
Site meeting
Characterful contexts
Office meeting
Conclusion: the place of organisational knowledge
Chapter 4: Subjects as objects
Direct experience
Professional judgement
Aligning perspectives
Negotiating external interests
Detaching through practice
Conclusion: objects in action
Chapter 5: Life and work
Living with history
Vocation
Being interested
Ambivalent interests
Becoming the person you are
Conclusion: interests in conservation
Part II: Things
Chapter 6: (Dis)Ordered things
Ordering things
Grappling with profusion
The work of stabilisation
Follow the documents
“Unmuddling” through fieldwork
Conclusion: the dialectics of order and disorder
Notes
Chapter 7: Crafting authenticity through skilled practice
Working out intervention
Fabric and form
Craft and conservation
Skilled vision and the practice of stonemasonry
Negotiating authenticity
Conclusion: working with multiplicity
Note
Chapter 8: Material transformation and scientific conservation
Making fast “the look of age”
Working with “the thing itself”
Craft and science in material conservation
Enacting conservation
Negotiating difference
Conclusion: (re)assembling the object of conservation
Notes
Chapter 9: Significance, faith and care
Assessing significance, taming dissonance
“Stone speaks”: faith and spirituality in a living building
Managing stakeholders
Mediating the “tourist gaze”
Care and its ethico-political relations
Conclusion: practising perspectivalism
Note
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Working through the past
Keeping things in being
The object of conservation
Making subjects, making objects
Bureaucracy, expertise and skilled practice
Time, authenticity and significance
The politics and ethics of care
Recursive continuities
Epilogue
Charters and conventions
References
Index

Citation preview

THE OBJECT OF CONSERVATION

The Object of Conservation examines how historic buildings, monuments and artefacts are cared for as valued embodiments of the past. It tells the fascinating story of the working lives of those involved in conservation through an ethnographic account of a national heritage agency. How are conservation objects made? What is the moral purpose of that making and what practical consequences flow from this? Revealing the hidden labour of keeping things as they are, the book highlights the ethical commitments and dilemmas involved in trying to care well. In doing so, it reveals how conservation objects are made literally to matter. Taking debates in the interdisciplinary field of heritage studies forward in important new directions, the book engages with themes of broader interest within the arts, humanities and social sciences, shedding new light on time, authenticity, modernity, materiality, expert knowledge and the politics of care. The Object of Conservation is a thought-provoking and engaging account that offers original insights for students, scholars, heritage professionals and others interested in the work of caring for the past. Siân Jones is Professor of Heritage at the University of Stirling, UK. Thomas Yarrow is Professor in Social Anthropology at Durham University, UK.

THE OBJECT OF CONSERVATION An Ethnography of Heritage Practice Siân Jones and Thomas Yarrow

Cover image: © Siân Jones First published 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Siân Jones and Thomas Yarrow The right of Siân Jones and Thomas Yarrow to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-65568-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-65567-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62238-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385 Typeset in Bembo by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

CONTENTS

List of figures Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations and acronyms

viii ix xii xiv

Introduction 1 The work of conservation 1 Situating conservation 3 Theorising objects in practice 8 Approaching conservation ethnographically 12 Note on the text 17 PART I

People 21 1 Present pasts 23 Re/valuing the past 24 Expertise in question 27 “Going deep with the paper” 31 “Change fatigue” 34 Ambivalent nostalgias 37 Crisis and continuity 39 Conclusion: shadowed by the past 43

vi  Contents

2 Working from the past 46 Humility 47 Patience 51 Pragmatism 54 Restore or preserve? 57 Conclusion: working from the past 63 3 Organising knowledge 66 Site meeting 67 Characterful contexts 73 Office meeting 77 Conclusion: the place of organisational knowledge 81 4 Subjects as objects 84 Direct experience 86 Professional judgement 89 Aligning perspectives 90 Negotiating external interests 92 Detaching through practice 94 Conclusion: objects in action 96 5 Life and work 98 Living with history 100 Vocation 101 Being interested 103 Ambivalent interests 108 Becoming the person you are 110 Conclusion: interests in conservation 112 PART II

Things 117 6 (Dis)Ordered things 119 Ordering things 121 Grappling with profusion 125 The work of stabilisation 129 Follow the documents 131 “Unmuddling” through fieldwork 134 Conclusion: the dialectics of order and disorder 140

Contents  vii

7 Crafting authenticity through skilled practice 143 Working out intervention 145 Fabric and form 151 Craft and conservation 155 Skilled vision and the practice of stonemasonry 157 Negotiating authenticity 159 Conclusion: working with multiplicity 161 8 Material transformation and scientific conservation 165 Making fast “the look of age” 167 Working with “the thing itself ” 170 Craft and science in material conservation 172 Enacting conservation 175 Negotiating difference 179 Conclusion: (re)assembling the object of conservation 182 9 Significance, faith and care 186 Assessing significance, taming dissonance 188 “Stone speaks”: faith and spirituality in a living building 191 Managing stakeholders 196 Mediating the “tourist gaze” 199 Care and its ethico-political relations 203 Conclusion: practising perspectivalism 207 Conclusion: working through the past 210 Keeping things in being 210 The object of conservation 211 Making subjects, making objects 213 Bureaucracy, expertise and skilled practice 214 Time, authenticity and significance 216 The politics and ethics of care 218 Recursive continuities 221 Epilogue Charters and Conventions References Index

223 226 227 242

FIGURES

2.1 Annual Monument Audit site meeting to inspect an HS Property in Care (T. Yarrow) 2.2 Tiles are used to differentiate new from old in an early twentieth-century SPAB-inspired “honest repair” (S. Jones) 3.1 Diagram of planned interventions, Dunkeld Cathedral (T. Yarrow) 3.2 During site meetings, buildings and monuments are framed as key actors in the decision-making process (T. Yarrow) 5.1 Masons at work at Glasgow Cathedral (E. Ramsey) 6.1 (Re)establishing relations between records and things during a site visit (S. Jones) 7.1 Stone repairs (indents) carried out by masons conserving Glasgow Cathedral (S. Jones) 7.2 Practice pieces for the reconstruction of decayed Gargoyles at Glasgow Cathedral (S. Jones) 8.1 A stone conservator at work on one of the carved musical angels in the Royal Chapel at Linlithgow Palace (S. Jones) 9.1 Tourists in the nave of Glasgow Cathedral (S. Jones)

57 61 70 83 113 137 146 154 169 200

PREFACE

This book originated in a friendship between the co-authors and a set of shared interests. Most simply, we wanted to better understand the everyday practices that shape the past as “heritage”. National heritage agencies often appear as faceless and monolithic entities; a perception that tends to be perpetuated by these organisations’ own corporate self-representations, but which has also been reinforced by scholarship in this area. We wanted to go beyond these generalised representations, to tell the specific stories of the everyday lives of the people who work for such organisations. We started with some simple questions: What kind of people are involved in conserving the past? Why do they choose to do this work? What do their daily working lives involve? How do their actions shape the buildings, monuments and artefacts we call the “historic environment”? How do they understand and negotiate authenticity in the face of material transformation and change? The shared interests that shaped our research developed out of more personally specific trajectories. SJ is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the interface of archaeology, anthropology and history. At the heart of her research is an interest in the entangled relations between people and things through time, bringing material, documentary and ethnographic research together to explore authenticity, value, identity, place and belonging. SJ brought extensive experience of conducting research with communities expressing specific attachments and interests in “old things”, as well as an established network of relationships with heritage professionals in Scotland. The research for this book fulfilled a long-standing desire to explore the diverse practices of heritage conservation professionals through an in-depth ethnographic study. More specifically, it allowed her to pursue

x  Preface

a fascination with how their work makes the material traces of the past available as objects of attention, concern, intervention and care. TY came to the project with a background in anthropology. Previously his work had focused on expertise as a social practice, exploring the everyday interactions through which knowledge is produced. Comparative perspectives and conceptual inspiration came from his ethnographic research in other professional contexts, including architecture, international development and archaeology. Research for the book also became a context to extend prior interests in understandings of modern time, emerging from ethnographic contexts in which the logics of “development” and “progress” were central. Where previously his work examined how people try to bring about positive change, conservation became a context to explore the active work of keeping things the same. Unusually, though not exceptionally, our understandings have developed through collaborative ethnography involving, in our case, the work of two people. How does ethnography work when different ethnographic subjectivities as well as different ethnographic sites are in play? For various practical and methodological reasons, we pursued our research sometimes together and sometimes apart. Participation in common contexts never produced exactly the same findings. Through our field notes, observations and regular ruminations, our shared understandings developed alongside better appreciation of the different positions from which these emerged. Though not from our perspectives a significant determinant of the approaches we took, differences of gender and (at the time) seniority set up more or less obvious differences in the ways people related to us and in the kinds of contexts we were able to access. These differences meant that even in shared fieldwork contexts, what we saw was never quite the same. Daily discussions in person, the textual dialectic of our fieldwork diaries (written separately but read together and hence informed by each other) and subsequent phases of writing constituted key modes through which our understandings coalesced. The point of our collaboration was not so much to gain “more” data, or more quickly, as it was to produce a more layered and, we hope, more nuanced understanding of the ethnographic contexts we shared. Framed by the mutual understandings that resulted from spoken and written exchanges, fieldwork in the contexts we encountered separately were always in a sense encountered together. Over time, we each came to see through the vision of the other. Throughout this book we have written from the perspective of a singular “we”, an authorial voice that was shaped through our collaborative fieldwork practices and the many conversations we had as we wrote. All parts of the book involved multiple drafts in which we both collaborated, commenting on, editing and re-writing one another’s work. We hope that the sum of this collective voice is more than the parts. Certainly, from our own perspectives we arrived at understandings, arguments and ways of seeing that neither could have envisaged alone. However, it may help the reader to know that this collective voice is differently centred in the substantive chapters that compose the two main parts of our account: TY took the lead on drafting most of Part One and SJ for most

Preface  xi

of Part Two. While both are the result of a profoundly collaborative process, we see a virtue in the different conceptual orientations that emerge from these specific trajectories (we explain these in the Introduction). We hope that the differently situated accounts of Part I and Part II produce a kind of binocular vision as different views whose partial irresolution produces a sense of depth when seen together. Throughout the book we use quotes drawn from our many ethnographic conversations, interviews and interactions. These are intended to give an understanding of conservation practice “up close and personal”, as it is described and explained by those involved. Quotes taken from social interactions are based on detailed notes we took at the time, often in the field. We have attempted to reproduce the language of these interactions as faithfully as possible but acknowledge the possibility of some minor slippages introduced by this recording process. Interviews were all digitally recorded and fully transcribed. The spoken word routinely contains redundancies, repetitions and discontinuities that can make written transcripts difficult to follow, and make people appear less articulate than in fact they are. While attempting to retain the overall texture and tone of the speakers’ words, we have sometimes tidied these up, for instance by removing “ums” and “ers”, in order to make the sense of these easier to follow. Where we have made substantive edits to transcribed text, normally to remove repetition or asides, we indicate this using a squared bracket […]. The book contains numerous detailed descriptions of everyday working interactions. These vignettes draw directly from our fieldwork diaries. Throughout the text, we have used pseudonyms when referring to specific individuals to help protect the anonymity of those we worked with. We have nevertheless been attentive to the limitations on anonymity which professional roles create; something that we often discussed with our research participants. The book develops substantively new arguments from those we have previously set out, based on ethnographic material that is mostly unpublished. However, in places we have built on earlier work. Chapter Three develops ideas originally published as “Where Knowledge Meets: heritage expertise at the intersection of people, perspective and place”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(1): 95–109. Some of the ethnographic material in the section Characterful Contexts, is drawn from “Retaining Character: heritage conservation and the logic of continuity”, Social Anthropology 26(3): 330–344. In various places (Chapters 2, 3 and 7), our accounts of stonemasons develop from papers we originally published as: “Crafting conservation: an ethnography of conservation practice”, Journal of Material Culture 18(1): 3–26; “‘Stone is stone’: engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20(2): 256–275.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book developed through research and writing over the course of roughly a decade. Many people made this possible in very many ways. We are very grateful to them all, though for reasons of anonymity and of space it’s unfortunately impossible to name them all here. First and foremost, we wish to express our thanks to all those who made our fieldwork possible and often very enjoyable. This is not just a book “about” heritage professionals, but an attempt to think with and through the complexities of their work. We are particularly indebted to all those who allowed us into their working lives to observe and at times participate. They candidly and generously shared their thoughts during interviews, conversations and monument visits. We appreciate the help of the following, who facilitated our fieldwork with the teams and Directorates they oversaw at the time: Barbara Cummins, Doreen Grove, David Mitchell, Gregor Stark and Richard Welander. Finally, we are indebted to the Minister of Glasgow Cathedral in 2011, members of the congregation and The Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral for helping us to understand their relationships with the building and the ways in which they care for it. Research was supported via a number of grants. The main phases of fieldwork were underpinned by a British Academy Small grant (Ref. SG100577) and by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant (SG122587). Our analysis also makes use of some of the ethnographic material generated as part of another project we were involved in, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/K006002/1). We are grateful to John Hughes for his input as Principal Investigator on this project, and to Rachel Douglas-Jones who worked on this as a postdoctoral researcher. Thanks to Andy Hajducki and Kate Hajducka, for accommodating us both in Edinburgh. Our account has benefitted hugely from the thoughts, insights, comments and corrections of people who read earlier drafts with generosity and care. Thanks

Acknowledgements  xiii

particularly to: Emma Andersson, Judith Anderson, Matei Candea, Chantal Conneller, Ruby Ceron-Carrasco, Caitlin DeSilvey, Sally Foster, Christa Gerdwilker, Paolo Heywood, Tracy Ireland, Stuart Jeffrey, Damiana Magris, Ellie McCrone, Jill van Millingen, Jennie Morgan, Dara Parsons, Eric Ramsey, John Raven, Adam Reed, Kit Reid, Colin Richards, Kathy Richmond, Liz Robson, Gregor Stark, Rona Walker and Richard Welander. More generally, we are grateful to our friends and colleagues for the many conversations that have sustained and fed our work, particularly in the Anthropology Department in Durham University, in the Division of History, Heritage and Politics, and Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy, at the University of Stirling, and in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Manchester (where SJ worked until 2016). All images are our own, except for Figure 5.1 for which we wish to thank Eric Ramsey. We are very grateful to Liz Robson for her help meticulously copy-editing and checking through the manuscript prior to submission. These people of course bear no responsibility for the final work. Over the course of its long gestation, the book has been a point of continuity amidst significant change and some challenging personal circumstances in the lives of both its authors. We are grateful to all those friends and family who have supported us along the way – some unfortunately no longer with us. In this regard, SJ would like to express particular appreciation to Chiara Bonacchi, Sally Foster, Qian Gao, Ruth Gilbert, Claire Jowitt, Jennie Morgan, Colin Richards, Thomas Yarrow, Marie and Robert Jeffrey, Fiona Gell, Dylan Gell Jones, and Robert, Cyril and the late Brenda Jones. Special thanks to Stuart Jeffrey for his enormous support and forbearance during the long gestation of this book (and the lost summer of 2021!). TY would like to express particular appreciation to Catherine Alexander, Emma Andersson, Matt Candea, Chantal Conneller, Joe Conneller, Siân Jones, Tomas Millar, as well as David, Rachel, Hugh, Tony and Judith Yarrow. The process of researching and writing this book has been a rich and rewarding process – as well as a lot of fun! We thank each other for making it so.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

AHD AMA ANT HEPS HES HS ICOMOS MCUs

Authorised Heritage Discourse Annual Monument Audit Actor-Network Theory Historic Environment Policy for Scotland Historic Environment Scotland Historic Scotland (1991-2015) International Council on Monuments and Sites Monument Conservation Units [also referred to previously and colloquially as “works teams” or “works squads”]. MSPs Members of the Scottish Parliament NPF Scotland’s National Performance Framework PiCC Properties in Care Clearance PiC Property in Care [of HS on behalf of the state] RCAHMS The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (1908-2015) RH Relative Humidity SHEP Scottish Historic Environment Policy (2009 and 2011) SJ Siân Jones SNP Scottish National Party SPAB Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings STS Science and Technology Studies TY Thomas Yarrow UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization XRF X-ray fluorescence

Also: The Act Ancient Monuments Protection Act, 1882 The Collections HS’s collection of portable objects related to the PiCs

INTRODUCTION

The work of conservation Seated at his desk, in a large open-plan office, Grant is talking about his job. Originally trained as an archaeologist, he works as a heritage manager for Scotland’s national heritage body. The monuments he regulates are exemplars of Scottish cultural heritage, designated as nationally significant. They range from castles and cathedrals to Neolithic standing stones, battlefields and industrial structures. It’s what is the right thing to do? What do I want the outcome to be? What do I think is reasonable in this situation? And I find that flow fascinating to work through. When it goes right it’s so intensely rewarding. Although the beauty of it is that in a hundred years from now you won’t notice the value of that work, all you’ll notice is the [monument’s] there and it’s in an appropriate setting, or that the castle hasn’t fallen down, because the grant case went correctly. Grant foregrounds the active work involved in keeping something ostensibly as it is – those things that need to happen in order to make it appear that nothing has been done. His approach is informed by an archaeological sensibility to the past, alongside international conservation charters and national policies. However, every case is specific, involving different kinds of monuments, different interest groups and different threats. As such, there is an ongoing need for judgement and consideration, translation and compromise. These emerge through particular kinds of practice linked to specific expertise; in his case, sites are visited, maps consulted, meetings held and reports written. For Grant, as for other heritage professionals, the continuity integral to conservation does not arise as the passive

DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-1

2  Introduction

outcome of doing nothing. Rather, it is an active achievement of judgements, decisions and interventions. It requires work. Inherent to this work is a fundamental tension. While objects of conservation exist in the present, they are significant in being of the past. As monuments, they are seen to be important as authentic embodiments of specific pasts, but as physically existing structures, they are subject to various forms of change. At the heart of conservation is a long-standing commitment to conserving historic monuments as they are, so that they can be passed on to future generations. John, a stonemason working on monuments in the care of the same organisation, proudly tells us that: When we get things that come together you just see a couple of wee [small] bits of stone. You don’t actually see the work that’s went into it. People go ‘oh, that’s nice’. But it’s satisfying getting it to all come back as if it’s never been touched. The craft of cutting stone is a highly complex process, involving techniques, attitudes and dispositions learnt during three-year apprenticeships and mastered over lifetimes. It is a very different kind of labour to that of Grant’s, involving different principles, practices, skills and dispositions. Yet there is a similar paradox at the heart of both their endeavours: animated by a commitment to preserve the material traces of the past, the work of heritage conservation inheres in forms of intervention that appear to leave things “as they are”, seemingly unchanged in essence. When things go well, nothing seems to have happened. Nevertheless, even the most sensitive interventions can affect the materiality, character and meaning of what is preserved. Slowing stone decay might involve raking out and replacing mortar, injecting acrylic resin solutions into cracks, or applying biocides to prevent algal growth, for example. Even where these interventions are in theory “reversible”, they have material implications that can effect the meaning and significance that people attribute to buildings and monuments (Douglas-Jones et al. 2016). More profoundly, commitments to a monument as the expression of a specific historic period might conflict with the values it accrues through later modifications and interventions. Is it better to conserve it as it now exists, or take it back to an earlier stage in its life? Are restoration and reconstruction a means to reinstate an original, authentic form, or a kind of historical deceit and erasure of the authentic life of the object? In recent decades, such long-standing conservation dilemmas have been re-animated by changing approaches to governance, community participation and “public good”, alongside interrelated pressures of austerity, sustainability and climate-changed environments (Cooper 2013). Yet the fundamental paradox of conservation remains: how to keep things in some essential way the same, even as they and the world transforms. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study (2010–2014), this book examines how historic buildings, monuments and artefacts are cared for as valued embodiments of the past. Our focus on “conservation” is ethnographic rather than

Introduction  3

analytic. Throughout the book, we examine how practitioners variously define and understand conservation as active forms of care for the past and highlight the actions and understandings that flow from these commitments. Focusing on Historic Scotland (HS), the national executive body charged with safeguarding Scotland’s heritage until 2014, we show how this opens out new ways to understand how “heritage” is made and imagined. We explore the Object of Conservation in the linked senses of how conservation objects are made, and the consequences and moral purpose of that making. At this intersection of conservation as object and purpose we ask, how are conservation objects produced through the diverse practices of heritage professionals and others? How does their work make the material traces of the past available as objects of attention, concern, intervention and care? How are contemporary social practices and institutional realities produced through heritage practitioners’ moral commitments? Relatedly, what are the ethical and political dimensions of conservation? We foreground conservation professionals’ own understandings of historic buildings, monuments and artefacts as materially and meaningfully consequential things, not so much worked on as with and through. We also reveal how things at times resist these understandings and practices, emerging as unruly, mutable and open to multiplicity. International conservation instruments and national policy documents presuppose an ontology of monuments and buildings as stable, unified objects. While our account complicates this understanding, it also highlights how such ideas are central to these institutional practices and are physically enacted through them. Intractable forces of erosion and deterioration, as well as complex histories of physical modification and changing significance, create sources of instability, disorder and jeopardy, which threaten the stability of the objects that practitioners seek to conserve. We show how they expose, negotiate and resolve this instability, through practices oriented to stabilising and unifying objects in the face of threats. They do so with a subtlety, reflexivity and personal commitment often neglected in prevailing critiques. The book highlights how conservation actors play an active, and at times decisive, role in the biographies of buildings and monuments, (re)assembling them conceptually and materially. Through this work, they grapple with conceptions of materiality, authenticity, significance and time, ultimately negotiating the problem of how to maintain meaningful relations with the past in a world of rupture and change.

Situating conservation How are conservation objects produced? Answers to this question have tended to take two forms, seeing these either as a product of actions of people in the past or as a construct of present social relations, identities and political interests. Analytically, this book departs from these two positions, as we elaborate in the next section. First, however, we trace how they have been central to both conservation thinking and critiques of it. We briefly delineate key developments in this history to foreground two distinctive orientations to conservation and its object.

4  Introduction

The roots of the modern conservation movement are usually traced to the eighteenth century when Europeans began to think of history as a process of temporal progression ( Jokilehto 1999). Understanding time as a series of unique and unrepeatable events, the past came to be seen as a “foreign country” (Lowenthal 1985). Where previously historic remains were valued as manifestations of universal ideals of beauty, they came to be seen as culturally and historically specific expressions. Enlightenment thinking valued these as evidence of progress from earlier stages of development. Romantic perspectives, by contrast, saw these as valuable material embodiments of folk traditions and ways of life, lost or marginalised in the process of modernisation. Both shared a concern to preserve material remains, founded on the common understanding that these retained the essence of national pasts, which once obliterated could not be recovered. A consciousness of the ruptures and destructive capacities of modernity played a key role in framing the modern conservation movement in the nineteenth century (Betts and Ross 2015; Jokilehto 1999; Pendlebury 2008). Where continuity could no longer be taken for granted, conservation emerged as an active and selfconscious valorisation of the past, linked to a specifically modern “endangerment sensibility” (Vidal and Dias 2016). While distinctive in its ideological underpinnings and substantive focus, heritage conservation entails a broadly similar logic to ecological conservation and political conservatism in its orientation to changes associated with modernity. Whether focusing on the destruction of historic artefacts (heritage conservation), social and political formations (political conservativism), or natural environments (ecological and environmental conservation), all conservationist thinking involves a theory of the limits and problems of transformative change and an effort to actively resist its perceived negative consequences. Distinct conservation movements locate and conceptualise these effects in different ways, but, extending Francesco Giubilei’s analysis of political conservativism, they can all be seen as a persistent and recurring “undercurrent in modern society [that] serves to express the need and value of continuity in a complex culture [that] has taken on change as its top priority” (2019: 3). In its various manifestations, conservation involves an explicitness about the relationships between past, present and future, and an active questioning of what these should be (Giubilei 2019; Harrison 2020). State intervention in the form of national legislation for the protection of historic monuments developed in many European countries during the nineteenth century (Glendinning 2013; Jokilehto 1999; Thurley 2013), from where it was also transposed to imperial colonies and subsequently postcolonial states (Betts and Ross 2015; Sengupta 2018). However, a broader view of “the state” and related actors, including the rich tapestry of antiquarian and preservationist groups, learned societies and influential individuals, reveals a complex set of ideas, debates and practices regarding conservation, both preceding and adjacent to formal state protection (Hall 2005; Swenson 2018). Astrid Swenson (2018), for instance, argues that the development of national heritage protection in Britain was often driven by imperial interests and international competition.

Introduction  5

Indra Sengupta (2018) has shown that the power relations and bureaucracy of the British colonial state in India facilitated stricter, more sweeping heritage protection legislation than could be enforced in Britain in the early twentieth century. Heidi Geismar (2015) has explored a long-standing tension between nationalist and internationalist conceptions of heritage, the latter embracing cosmopolitan ideals of shared humanity. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ideas about authenticity have been central to conservation (Eggert 2009). If the importance of architecture, historic artefacts or works of art, lies in the embodiment of a “real” connection to the past, and in the uniqueness of the objects that result, different thinkers have understood their originality in divergent ways. For the influential nineteenthcentury French architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, originality was located in idealised understandings of original design and architectural intention, a perspective that gave priority to the form of buildings as creative expressions (Glendinning 2013: 91–97). As a corollary, Viollet-le-Duc and others (e.g. Salvin, Bodley and Gilbert Scott) set about stripping back later additions to historic buildings, with the aim of restoring what they understood to be the “truth” of original architectural vision (Delafons 1997: 14). By contrast, for John Ruskin, a leading Romantic thinker, all forms of restoration were inimical to the aims of conservation; “a Lie from beginning to end” (1880 [1849]: 196) involving the destruction of the unique authentic work, shaped by those associated with it and marked by the passage of time ( Jokilehto 1999: 175). Reflecting with dismay on restorations he witnessed on a tour of Italy, Ruskin wrote to his father: “Let them take the greatest possible care of all they have got, and when care will conserve it no longer, let it perish inch by inch, rather than retouch it” (cited in Jokilehto 1999: 180). Ruskin’s work was influential on later developments in the history of conservation, contributing to the idea that authenticity is located in material fabric. Accordingly, the primary thrust of William Morris’s Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) Manifesto (1877) was a critique of restoration and the promotion of protection. The SPAB approach combined “carefully considered inaction” (Slocombe n.d.) with judicious maintenance using traditional crafts; as the Manifesto put it, “to stave off decay by daily care, […] to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands” (SPAB 1877). A concern with material fabric as the locus of authenticity was also taken up in various modified forms by influential European architects, engineers and conservators, such as Alois Riegl, Camillo Boito, Gustavo Giovannoni and Cesare Brandi (Hernández Martínez 2008: 249–251). In turn, along with the principle of minimum, evidence-based intervention, a materialist approach to authenticity came to underpin a number of international conservation instruments, including Recommendations of the Madrid Conference (1904), Charter of Athens (1933), Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1964) and the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972). Over the course of the twentieth century, a complex battery of techniques and methods have been marshalled to determine the authenticity, or truthfulness, of historic objects, buildings and art ( Jones 2010). Initially, connoisseurship played

6  Introduction

an important role, alongside historical disciplines, including archaeology, art history and architectural history (Stanley Price et al. 1996). As the twentieth century progressed, these were combined with, and at times displaced by, conservation science. According to Muñoz Viñas, this operates as a “truth-enforcing operation” (2011 [2005]: 81), reinforcing notions of authenticity by applying increasingly sophisticated techniques for analysing the interior fabric of the object of conservation. Finally, at a different scale altogether, setting and use have been long-standing factors in establishing authenticity, particularly with regard to historic landscapes and buildings in use; objects that are located in primary contexts often being seen as more authentic than those in secondary ones. Despite differences of orientation, these approaches all share the assumption that the past exists as a self-evidently distinct context from present concerns, interests and meanings. From this broadly modernist perspective, conservation philosophies construe the practices of conservation as subsidiary to the truth of the object that is conserved (Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]: 65). Alois Riegl (1996 [1902]) acknowledged how heritage is meaningfully elaborated in relation to various “present day values”, but saw these as subsidiary to the “memorial values” imposed by the authors of the work. For Martin Heiddeger, writing in the early and middle part of the twentieth century, preservation thus consisted in the creative custodianship of the truth of the artwork (Eggert 2009). Cesare Brandi’s influential conservation philosophy similarly emphasised how the object conditions the work of conservation, encompassing careful and critical “restoration” to recover the truth of the “aesthetic creation” and its subsequent reception (Glendinning 2013: 264). Since the late twentieth century, these essentialist understandings of the object of conservation have existed alongside an increasingly influential body of thought that starts from a very different foundational premise. Whereas modernist conservation thinking locates the authenticity and value of heritage as intrinsic to the object of conservation, postmodern approaches reverse this, seeing both as a construct of present social practices and relations (Eggert 2009; Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]). Heritage objects are in this view subsidiary to contemporary concerns, particularly political ones, being understood as semiotically and materially constructed by them. The temporal logic of modernist understandings is thus reversed: rather than past epochs constituting a prelude to present concerns, the past is understood as a construct of the present, a backwards projection shaped by contemporary interests and values (Tonkin et al. 1989). Laurajane Smith’s (2006) idea of an “Authorized Heritage Discourse” (AHD) captures and consolidates critical orientations to heritage, linking critiques of the ideological uses of heritage (e.g. Lowenthal 1985; Wright 2009 [1985]) to the normative principles and technical practices associated with its conservation. There is a hegemonic ‘authorized heritage discourse’, which is reliant on the power/knowledge claims of technical and aesthetic experts, and institutionalized state agencies and amenity societies. This discourse takes its

Introduction  7

cue from the grand narratives of nation and class on the one hand, and technical expertise and aesthetic judgement of the other. The ‘authorized heritage discourse’ privileges monumentality and grand scale, innate artefact/site significance tied to time depth, scientific/aesthetic expert judgement, social consensus and nation building. It is a self-referential discourse, which has a particular set of consequences. (2006, 11) Heritage conservation and management are here positioned as constitutive cultural processes; “heritage is heritage because it is subjected to the management and preservation/conservation process, not because it simply ‘is’” (2006: 3). For Smith, like others (Handler 1986; Holtorf 2013; Holtorf and Schadla-Hall 1999; Lowenthal 1992), authenticity and meaning are socially and politically constructed, motivated by everything from essentialist identity politics to the commodification of heritage in the context of tourism. At the same time, she argues, authenticity “exists within the AHD as a device through which heritage professionals may authorize and legitimize the past and its material remains as universal heritage” (Smith 2006: 125). In her substantive analysis of the “manored past”, Smith (115–161) consolidates critiques by Robert Hewison (1987), Patrick Wright (2009 [1985]) and others, arguing that the English country house obscures visions of the “real” past through a synthetic heritage that responds to present concerns, upholding the claims and causes of the wealthy and powerful. Elsewhere in the book, Smith embraces relativistic understandings of heritage dissonance, celebrating the plurality of ways in which pasts are made meaningful, specifically viewed from marginalised perspectives (for other examples, see Graham et al. 2000; Samuel 1994; Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). Undoubtedly, a gulf has opened-up between modernist approaches to heritage conservation and postmodern critiques from the late twentieth century onwards (Eggert 2009). The influence of modernist conservation thinking remains important in conservation principles and practices, perpetuating the idea that “evidence” and “authenticity” are inherent, objective attributes of historic objects, which postmodern, deconstructive scholarship has been intent on dismantling. Yet, substantial bodies of academic research in historical disciplines also remain founded upon an essentially affirmative modernist stance to the authenticity of the objects of study (see Brumann 2014: 174). Moreover, heritage conservation itself is not immune to postmodern intellectual currents, as illustrated by the practitioners contributing to Alison Bracker and Alison Richmond’s volume who “expose the uncomfortable truth of the impossibility of singular and objective truths within cultural heritage care” (2011 [2009]: xvii). Relatedly, a growing literature by conservation practitioners-turned-academics proposes new conservation paradigms attentive to both critical academic literatures and the changing socio-economic contexts in which conservation is practised (e.g. Clavir 2002; Eggert 2009; Emerick 2014; Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]; Pendlebury and Brown 2021). Meanwhile, Višnja Kisic ́ argues that AHD has been challenged “from

8  Introduction

within” by a number of recent authorising charters and conventions in which heritage objects are “addressed not simply as static forms in need of preservation, but as dynamic resources that are both constitutive of identity and the basis for development projected into distinctive futures” (2016: 65).1 The result of these complex currents is not that modernist concerns with historic truth, authenticity and intrinsic value have disappeared from contemporary heritage discourses, but that they are now configured in qualitatively different ways (Cooper 2010, 2013; Pendlebury 2008, 2013; Harrison 2013a). If in some contexts modernist conservation ideologies continue to hold conviction, they no longer work as universal grounding principles in the way they once did. Conservation practitioners often act with authenticity in mind but do so despite, and even because, its status as a self-evident truth can no longer be assumed (Handler and Gable 1997). Materially essentialist ideas of authenticity persist in often unarticulated assumptions, alongside more relativistic approaches where the focus is increasingly on culturally specific meanings and social values. The Nara Document (1994), and responses to it, exemplify such contradictions and tensions. For Knut Larsen, the scientific co-ordinator, Nara represents a shift away from “a Eurocentric approach to a post-modern position characterized by recognition of cultural relativism” (1995: xiii). Nevertheless, there is still a strong emphasis on universal value in the Nara conference proceedings (Larsen 1995) and, as Herb Stovel puts it, a concern with “the need for practical tools to measure the wholeness, the realness, the truthfulness of the site on which they work” (1995: 396, our emphasis). Furthermore, the final paragraph of The Nara Document returns to a set of criteria for determining authenticity: “Form and design, materials and substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location and setting, and spirit and feeling” (Article 13). Thus, the principles at the core of modernist understandings of authenticity remain fundamental even whilst they are widened to include values, spirit and feeling (Brumann 2014: 178). The current epoch encompasses as much as it supersedes modernist understandings of conservation and heritage. In our account, we explore how these different orientations intersect in the everyday institutional practices through which conservation makes its object. In the following section, we outline our conceptual approach to these practices.

Theorising objects in practice Modernist and postmodernist understandings of heritage both start from the assumption of a subject-object distinction. Consequently, they have tended to speak past one another. Either the object is “real” and authenticity an inherent property of it, or both it and its authenticity are cultural constructs. Either values or meanings are an intrinsic product of past realities or a product of current ideas and agendas. The problem is that these opposing understandings elide understanding of the complex negotiations at the heart of conservation practices (Eggert 2009; Jones 2010), where people and things are complexly enmeshed in ways that are not well-captured through these analytic binaries. Seeking to

Introduction  9

explore these practices, we approach our material from a position of “theoretical pluralism” (Macdonald 2013: 7), drawing on work by scholars focusing on other heritage contexts, as well as comparative literatures that help shed light on these social interactions. As Rodney Harrison has argued, the “discursive turn” that underpins many postmodern critiques of heritage has been important in “drawing attention to the knowledge/power effects of heritage and its processes of identification, exhibition and management” (2013a: 9). However, despite Smith’s (2006: 13) insistence that critical discourse analysis accommodates practices and performances, subsequent research on AHD predominantly focuses on principles of heritage conservation and management, as articulated through legal instruments and policy documents, conventions and charters. Concomitantly, the complex relations between conservation policies and the everyday practices of heritage institutions have often been neglected, alongside the intersecting agency of material things (Hill 2018). While the concept of AHD importantly foregrounds the systemic relations and shared assumptions of heritage professionals, this framing tends to render heritage expertise as a relatively undifferentiated discursive nexus, flattening the diverse forms of expertise involved in constituting conservation objects. Even while practitioners increasingly recognise the complex, subjective and contingent nature of their own work (e.g. Bracker and Richmond 2011 [2009]; Pye and Sully 2007; Villers 2004), the ethnographic complexities of their practices remain relatively poorly understood. This is particularly true with respect to the institutional practices through which expert knowledge materially congeals around specific historic buildings, monuments and artefacts ( Jones and Yarrow 2013; Hølleland and Skrede 2018). Moving beyond a discursive focus, we build on recent ethnographic approaches, which foreground the quotidian practices through which the past is constructed (e.g. Breglia 2006; Handler 1988; Handler and Gable 1997; Harrison et al. 2020; Meskell 2011; Winter 2011). These nevertheless tend to focus on resistance to official heritage discourses, for instance, by local residents, minorities and indigenous communities (e.g. Herzfeld 1991; Jones 2011; Joy 2012). Even when heritage experts are present in these accounts (e.g. Breglia 2006; Brumann 2012) they are rarely a primary focus of attention (though see Harrison et al. 2020; Lamprakos 2015). Thus, as Christoph Brumann has recently observed, “[i]n comparison to what we know about the carriers and consumers of heritage, we are much less informed about heritage institutions and their personnel” (2014: 182). A recent spate of UNESCO ethnographies reveals the power of ethnography to shed light on the “world-making” practices involved in inscription, evaluation, monitoring, decision-making and governance within international heritage institutions (e.g. Bortolotto et al. 2020; Brumann 2021; Hafstein 2018; Meskell 2018). Notwithstanding this important work, little ethnographic research has focused centrally on national heritage institutions (though see Heinich 2009, 2010–2011), which have so often been the focus of heritage critiques.

10  Introduction

We address this lacuna in this book. Our focus on conservation objects is developed in two related ways: on the one hand, we seek to show how conservation creates objects out of the actions of heritage experts (to paraphrase Candea 2014); on the other, we explore how conservation professionals attribute agency to these objects and act with them in mind. While we foreground how conservation professionals’ decisions and interventions profoundly shape these conservation objects, we also highlight how their own practices are shaped through their engagements with them. Mathew Hill observes that: “Even though heritage is ultimately about things, scholars of heritage have paid surprisingly little attention to their nature” (2018: 1179). Aiming to understand how conservation objects materialise through practice, we draw on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and assemblage theory (Latour 2005; Law and Singleton 2005; Mol 2002). These accounts foreground how expert knowledge shapes the world in order to know it, in ways that are always specific and situated. Like Harrison et al., we are interested in conservation’s “varied modes of existence” (2020: 7); the multiple realities that are produced through “contingent practices of assembling and reassembling bodies, techniques, technologies, materials, values, temporalities and spaces” (2020: 6). Influenced by Annmarie Mol’s work on medical practice, we approach heritage conservation as “an amalgam of variants-in-tension” (2002: 115), examining how it involves different ways of knowing, associated with specific modes of “doing” (cf. Macdonald 2009; Hill 2018). Building on this work, we foreground how conservation knowledge is contoured by the material contexts in which it arises, and through the objects it seeks to know and understand. Thus we explore how distinct forms of expertise “enact” (after Mol 2002) conservation objects in qualitatively different ways. Inspired by Cristina Grasseni’s concept of “skilled vision” (2004, 2007a), we aim to highlight how these ways of knowing involve seeing in importantly specific ways. Grasseni argues that “cattle breeders, archaeologists, laser surgeons, even police consultants [...] each have a different world in front of their eyes, because they were each trained to see it differently” (2007a: 3). If different conservation professionals see conservation artefacts in different ways, this is not because they have abstractly different “perspectives”: rather, different skilled practices are associated, as Grasseni argues, with particular forms of sensory engagement, bodily comportment and technical competency that materialise as specific relations to conservation objects. Modernist and postmodern perspectives have often shared an assumption that the object of conservation is a singular and stable point of articulation between subjectively plural perspectives (Hill 2018). By contrast, our account foregrounds how the singular conservation object emerges as a provisional outcome of the “coordination” of these plural enactments (Mol 2002: 54–55). If the object of conservation is constituted through heritage practice, what kinds of actions are set in train by these objects? While anthropological discussions of material agency (Gell 1997; Henare et al. 2007; Reed 2011; Strathern

Introduction  11

1988) intersect and overlap with many of the ANT-inspired approaches described above, anthropologists have tended to emphasise actors’ own conceptualisations of materials ( Jensen et al. 2017) and the actions that result from these understandings. Casper Bruun-Jensen describes (sympathetically but not uncritically) how in this anthropological approach “the thing becomes the story of its effects as told by people” (2021: 8). From this more classically ethnographic orientation, we foreground conservation professionals’ understandings of the material past as an animating force in the present (Yarrow 2018a.) We examine the practical consequences of these understandings, specifically how institutional practices, professional identities and forms of ethical care emerge as effects of commitments to these conservation objects. Rather than analytically deconstruct these ideas, we aim to show ethnographically how they are practically situated and deflected. Our aim is not to critique the linear, modernist understandings of time (Bear 2014) that underline conservation, but to unravel their specific effects: how the present is variously directed and unfolded from the material remains of the past. Likewise, we explore how materially essentialist understandings of conservation objects orient a range of institutional actions and professional identities. Seeking to understand the animating force of ideas about evidence, authenticity and significance, we describe how conservation practice simultaneously creates and complicates these concepts ( Jones 2010; Jones and Yarrow 2013; Yarrow 2018a; Yarrow 2018b). In moving beyond the monolithic understandings of institutional practice that have often characterised accounts of AHD, we build on the “new anthropology of bureaucracy” (Bear and Mathur 2015: 18; particularly Hoag and Hull 2017; Hull 2012a and 2012b), specifically the limited studies where these approaches have been applied to heritage (e.g. Bortolotto et al. 2020; Brumann 2021; Harrison et al. 2020). Inspired by this work, we question the utility of morally absolutist critiques of heritage organisations, variously as sites for the enactment of structural violence, the retrenchment of state power, or as neoliberal agents of the market. Our contention is not that these aspects are unimportant, but that conservation objects are entangled in institutional practices involving tensions, choices and negotiations that are not well understood if interpreted as mere epiphenomena of such purportedly underlying, systemic processes. By exploring heritage bureaucracies ethnographically, we foreground the ethical and ideological commitments of those involved in this work; how work is structured materially and spatially and the plurality of personal and professional commitments that characterise these institutional spaces. Rather than search for an “essence” of conservation discourse we draw out the manifold ways in which conservation matters in the lives of those tasked with enacting institutional policies and objectives. Focusing on the role of documents as specific artefacts of institutional process (Hull 2012b; Riles 2001, 2006), we highlight how they describe and animate a range of activities in ways that are not reducible to their straightforwardly representational functions. Decision-making processes have political dimensions, but to suggest that the views of conservation practitioners merely reflect these interests considerably

12  Introduction

underplays the ethical and practical complexity of these negotiations and their affective dimensions. Inspired by recent calls to “personalise the expert” (Boyer 2005, 2008), we aim to “move beyond signalling the presence of experts and towards grappling with what kinds of persons they are” (Boyer 2008: 39). Thus, we ask how individual subjectivity variously becomes a source of expertise or a barrier to knowledge (Shapin 2008). Relatedly, we explore how conservation actors imagine their life to be implicated in their work and vice versa. We build on recent insights from the anthropology of ethics (Laidlaw 2014; Lambek 2015; Mol 2002), to highlight and explore how conservation is associated with ethical tensions that are encountered and explored in practice in a range of routine ways. How and why do these professionals care for the past? What ethical claims support these duties of care? And how do those involved imagine and resolve the contradictions inherent in their respective roles? In practice conservation involves choices between courses of action informed, but not determined by, principles, philosophies and regulations. We therefore examine how ethical issues are encountered through the quotidian contexts of specific interventions. Inspired by work on “care” in medical (Kleinman 2012) and other contexts (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), we foreground how acts of caring for the past, make people differently present to themselves and to others. Conservation involves entangled “matters of concern” (Latour 2004) that move beyond political interest to encompass “affectively charged connotations, notably those of trouble, worry and care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017: 42). In this way, we explore objects of conservation as “matters of care” (2017: 57) in the distinct but entangled senses of mattering: their value makes them worthy of protection and that protection arises from their material qualities and shapes their material form. We show how conservation objects are both the cause and consequence of these acts of care.

Approaching conservation ethnographically At the heart of our project is an attempt to gain an intimate understanding of the everyday work of heritage conservation from the perspectives of those involved. This agenda has been pursued through an ethnographic approach involving extended periods of time observing, participating in and discussing the day-to-day lives of heritage conservation practitioners. Our account is situated “adjacently” (Riles 2001), rather than critically, to the more practically oriented concerns of those we describe. Here, we introduce the ethnographic context before describing our methodology. Our research focuses on heritage practitioners employed by HS, the executive government agency responsible for safeguarding Scotland’s built heritage and promoting its understanding and enjoyment between 1991 and 2015. Initially a branch of the Scottish Office, it became part of the Scottish Government with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. As a direct government agency, HS was part of the Civil Service at the time of our fieldwork and still very much imbued with a public service ethos and culture (Cooper 2013: 88). However,

Introduction  13

this was often in tension with neoliberal reforms, such as externalisation of services, customer service, value for money and, from 2008, austerity economics (see Cooper 2010; also Thurley 2013 on the English context). Our ethnographic fieldwork (2010–2014) coincided with the final five years of HS’s existence and a time of considerable change, leading up to the creation of a new non-departmental public body with charitable status in 2015: Historic Environment Scotland (HES). HES was created by the amalgamation of HS and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), the executive public body responsible for recording, interpreting and collecting information on the historic environment. Our research does not incorporate the new organisation and, whilst many of the pre-existing functions of HS transferred to the new body, there are significant differences in institutional governance and culture. HS’s remit for conservation took a range of practical forms. During our fieldwork, the organisation had a statutory role in the designation of scheduled monuments, listed buildings, gardens and designed landscapes, and historic battlefields. HS heritage managers (ancient monument and listed building inspectors up until 2012) also dealt with regulatory work for scheduled monument consent and were statutory consultees on a range of development proposals affecting the historic environment (including some listed buildings). The organisation also administered several conservation grant schemes and offered technical conservation guidance to owners of historic properties. Importantly for our research, HS was also responsible for the conservation, management and presentation of the national estate, composed of sites either in state ownership or under state guardianship agreements. At the time of our fieldwork, these amounted to some 345 so-called Properties in Care (hereafter PiCs), most of which were also designated scheduled monuments (or treated as such), and therefore by definition deemed to be of national significance. Regulation of conservation work at PiCs was complicated in some instances by also being (part-)designated as listed buildings. A few properties were also (part of ) world heritage sites with management plans produced by HS and periodically monitored by UNESCO. For HS, 2010–2014 was a time of significant institutional change and restructuring, one of the most important developments being the separation of regulatory powers from those parts of the organisation involved in conserving and managing the PiCs. This was accompanied by the introduction of a formalised internal consent process, Properties in Care Clearance (PiCC), in 2010, but thereafter renamed Scheduled Monument Clearance Process (SMCP). As a result, HS conservation architects responsible for the conservation of PiCs found themselves in a similar position to external clients. Informed by cultural resource officers with expertise in the cultural significance of PiCs, they had to apply to heritage managers for consent to undertake repairs and maintenance work on these monuments. These changes related to a broader increase in practices of audit, linked to new concerns with “transparency” and “public accountability”. At the same time, significant cuts to core government funding created pressure to develop the

14  Introduction

income-earning potential of the PiCs through high-quality visitor services and experiences. These pressures, alongside changing health and safety and accessibility legislation, the threat of associated litigation, transition to a low-carbon future and the impact of climate change, contributed to the increasing complexity of the challenges facing the people we worked with. At the same time, their work was framed by international conservation instruments. As already discussed, these comprise a complex mix of modernist foundational principles relating to “minimum intervention” and material authenticity, with postmodernist ideas and approaches. The latter orientation, linking heritage to concepts of identity, intercultural dialogue, participation, wellbeing and change is prominent in Our Place in Time (Scottish Government 2014). Arguably, this ethos was also informed by the contemporary majority Scottish National Party (SNP) Government’s desire to differentiate itself from the Westminster Government approach (then a Conservative-Liberal Coalition) in the lead up to the 2014 Referendum on Independence. Whilst also focusing on “mainstreaming” heritage (Baxter 2015), the SNP government emphasised the intrinsic value of heritage to society, tying it in with the wider sustainable development goals and the public value ethos of Scotland’s National Performance Framework, in contrast to the narrower focus on economic benefits at Westminster. Contrary to media expectations, the independence movement was not, for the most part, driven by cultural nationalism, but rather an inclusive civic nationalism focused on a distinctive vision of Scotland’s future. Accordingly, whilst, heritage offers a ready source of national symbolism dating back to nineteenth-century nationbuilding, national heritage policies primarily emphasised its socio-economic contribution to a fairer, more equal society characterised by sustainable growth. As new anthropologies of bureaucracy have shown, organisations emerge through practice in complex and specific ways that are only ever partially captured by formal structures and institutional histories (see Hoag and Hull 2017). Multiple versions of a large bureaucracy like HS exist, because where you are and what you do in an organisation changes what it is. Accordingly, we treat “organisation” as a verb rather than a noun, as a process rather than an object. We encountered multiple versions of HS between 2010 and 2014, in part, because it underwent several phases of restructuring. Directorates and teams focusing on specific practices, specialisms or regions of Scotland were variously amalgamated, broken up and/or renamed from one year to the next. At times it seemed like HS employees struggled to keep up with these changes as much as we did. Organisational structure and workflow diagrams proliferated and could be seen on noticeboards throughout HS buildings. These “bubble charts” were often out of date and annotated in ways that foregrounded personal working relationships and practices, creating continuity in the face of dislocation and undercutting the panoptical visualisation such technologies lend themselves to. Whilst our focus is on how the institution unfolds through practice, it is important to briefly outline who we worked with and where. Undertaking fieldwork

Introduction  15

in phases over the course of five years, we spent time with conservation practitioners with a range of disciplinary backgrounds and technical or practical training. These include architectural and art history, archaeology, architectural conservation, conservation science, applied technical conservation, collections management, traditional crafts and building trades. As we show, these forms of education and training are cultivated and aligned through institutional roles and the traditions associated with them. We worked with stonemasons in the Monument Conservation Units (“works teams”) and district and regional architects who co-ordinate conservation work at PiCs and advise on casework and grant aid for privately owned designated sites. We also worked with cultural resource officers who specialise in significance assessment of sites. We encountered interpretation officers, but did not do fieldwork with other teams focusing on Operations and Visitor Services in the Commercial Directorate. Most years we conducted fieldwork together. In the final season (2013), SJ focused on the work of stone and painting conservators in Applied Technical Conservation and that of the Collections Team who document, archive and curate the assemblages of historic artefacts associated with PiCs. Meanwhile, TY worked with the teams responsible for the designation and regulation of listed buildings and scheduled monuments in the Directorate of Heritage Management. We also conducted fieldwork with some of those who occupied, used, or were otherwise attached to historic buildings and monuments, principally during a dedicated “stakeholder” field season at Glasgow Cathedral in 2011. Those we worked with came from a range of backgrounds. Employees working at the headquarters in Edinburgh were generally university educated. By contrast, trades and craft professionals doing manual work in the MCUs generally trained through apprenticeships either at HS or prior to joining the organisation. Class distinctions were rarely openly acknowledged but were sometimes implicit in interactions between these different parts of the organisation. While employees in the works teams were mostly Scottish, the civil servants and experts at Longmore house came from a range of nationalities, including a significant number of people from England and other home nations. A number had previously worked in the national heritage organisations of these other countries. At the time of our research, ethnic diversity within the organisation was extremely limited. While this was not a focus of much explicit attention during the time of our fieldwork it has since become a source of institutional concern, as with heritage, arts and cultural sector organisations more generally. Geographically, a substantial proportion of our work was based at HS’s headquarters, Longmore House, a large Neoclassical Victorian building close to the centre of Edinburgh, though SJ also worked at the Technical Conservation Unit in South Gyle. From here, we followed various actors on site visits to different parts of the country. We undertook fieldwork with people in Heritage Management (formerly known as the Inspectorate and renamed in 2012) engaged in designation and casework relating to listed buildings and scheduled monuments in private ownership (mainly in Argyll and the Borders). Most of the monuments and

16  Introduction

buildings we focused on were PiCs, although we did also accompany architects and heritage managers in some of their regulatory work focusing on designated monuments in private ownership. We participated in Annual Monument Audits (AMAs) at PiCs in Dumfries and Galloway and Fife. During two field seasons, Glasgow Cathedral was the primary locus of much of our ethnography: the first (2010) based with the stonemasons engaged in a 30-year maintenance project; and the second (2011) focusing on those who visit, use, and worship in, the Cathedral. We also worked with applied stone conservators at Linlithgow Palace, and collection managers at Melrose and Jedburgh Abbeys and on collection audits in Argyll. We visited numerous other PiCs, whilst observing and participating in the everyday lives of our research participants, not least Lochmaben and Cadzow Castles, which were the focus of an HS workshop envisioning radical heritage futures for these highly compromised monuments. Through these contexts, we examined how different forms of expertise intersect in relation to specific buildings, monuments and collections. We attended meetings on scaffolding and in offices and made site visits to different parts of the country. We conversed with those involved as they worked, on long car journeys, during lunch breaks, over coffees and sometimes in pubs. In addition, we undertook around 90 focused semi-structured recorded interviews with people purposively selected to reflect the range of expertise and roles within the organisation. Together these experiences, observations and conversations help explicate some of the key differences of perspective and approach of different actors and shed light on the dynamic ways in which these are negotiated and resolved in practice. The book engages with issues that relate to broad processes through which heritage conservation and management practices participate in the production of historic environments. Our scope is broad, including everything involved in constituting the object of conservation as a matter of attention, understanding, concern and care, yet our methodological window is specific. We do not present the ethnography in this book as representative of the heritage sector as a whole, and neither can we claim it represents HS in its entirety. Our efforts to understand how knowing unfolds through the lens of practice entail a necessary partiality. Since practices are always specific, they cannot be aggregated to be understood as a totalising whole. Our account does not exhaust the possible contexts and perspectives through which heritage works, even within the organisation. Our research is restricted temporally, reflecting the concerns of an organisation at a particular period in time. The institutional change and organisational re-structuring summarised above led to shifts in terminology, institutional structure, role and procedure that complicate the so-called “ethnographic present”. By the end of our fieldwork, we were aware that much of the material collected during earlier phases already spoke of contexts that had been significantly superseded. This unexpectedly longitudinal perspective highlights how efforts to produce continuity in various forms of heritage object emerge against, and often in tension with, various forms of change, including the institutional contexts through which conservation itself operates. If the moment we encountered was one of

Introduction  17

specific and perhaps exceptional transformation, it is worth highlighting that change has itself been a constant in the heritage sector (Thurley 2013). Moreover, the issues we explore through this book, including institutional restructuring and the management of change, transcend the historic and geographical specificities of this ethnographic context. From this ethnographic perspective, we aim to shed light on the complexities involved in making and managing objects of conservation within a national heritage organisation, of the kind so often regarded as bastions of undifferentiated, “top-down”, authorised heritage.

Note on the text The book is divided into two parts: people and things. This heuristic distinction is as much about conceptual orientation as it is substantive focus. Both parts are about the entanglements of people and things in the process of conserving and caring for the past, exploring how distinctions between subjects and objects are recursively enacted through these practices. However, in each part, we situate ourselves differently in terms of how we explore and explain this. Part I is methodologically more humanistic focusing on how people explicitly conceptualise relations between themselves and the conservation objects they care for. Part II is more oriented by post-human approaches, foregrounding the more-than-human dimensions of their work. Part I centres analysis on the making and shaping of “people”. Focusing on the forms of professional “self ” that develop through conservation practice we foreground the central paradox that people are necessary for the conservation of historic objects and yet a potential threat to them. We approach these from a classically ethnographic perspective, highlighting the terms, concepts and discourses through which conservation professionals conceptualise their work. From this perspective, our discussion of conservation objects centres on people’s understandings of these material remains: what they say about them; how they trace agency in relation to them; and the forms of personal and professional identity that arise in relation to them. Chapter 1 examines how recent institutional transformations are associated with forms of memory and nostalgia that express a range of ambivalences to changes in the work of HS employees. Chapter 2 explores how they articulate the personal and professional virtues that are central to their work, through the linked ideas of humility, humbleness, sensitivity, pragmatism and patience. Chapter 3 centres on meetings, highlighting how these act as institutional spaces to negotiate and reconcile differences of institutional knowledge and perspective on the object of conservation. Chapter 4 extends this analysis to consider how the ideal of “objectivity” is situated and enacted. Chapter 5 explores narratives about the relationship between work and life, foregrounding the ambivalent status of “personal interests” as a source of professional legitimacy and yet as professionally problematic. Throughout these chapters, our analysis foregrounds how conservation professionals understand themselves as conduits of the past, describing their work as subsidiary to the objects they seek to conserve.

18  Introduction

Part II gives priority to “things”, paying close attention to the material contexts that heritage professionals engage with and manipulate, and to the actions these set in train. Focusing on the more than human elements of these practices, we explore how the object of conservation is materially mediated and realised. In doing so, Part II foregrounds the implacability of things, how they slip and slide away from people’s efforts to control and understand them and in this sense act in ways that are not reducible to the meanings that people make of them. Chapter 6 explores the dynamics at play between ordering practices involving classification and related documentary infrastructures on the one hand, and the disorder created by the profusion and mutability of things on the other. Chapter 7 shifts attention to the different kinds of multi-sensorial, skilled practice involved in the conservation of a particular site, Glasgow Cathedral, revealing how the commitment to a singular object and its authenticity is pursued in the face of multiplicity. Chapter 8 extends this analysis to material transformation, exploring how scientific conservation intervenes in the “look of age” and the ethics and micro-politics of such acts of stabilisation. In Chapter 9, we return to Glasgow Cathedral and explore how forms of perspectivalism mediated by the concept of significance underpin HS employees’ attempts to understand and manage “stakeholders”, whose different understandings of the Cathedral, framed by faith and other contemporary affective attachments, create diverse forms of concern and care. Finally, after a concluding chapter, we reflect on the implications of this account for conservation practice in a brief epilogue, asking whether understanding conservation differently also offers perspectives on how it might be done differently. Our approach to collaborative ethnography and writing is elaborated in detail in the Preface. Here, suffice to say that the authorial conventions that force a choice between the singular “I” and the multiple “we” do not adequately capture the complexities of the subject position/s from which we speak. As a negotiated outcome of experiences and ideas shared and debated for over ten years, we speak in a voice that is more than one, but less than two (paraphrasing Mol 2002). If this is not quite the singular voice of the lone fieldworker of conventional ethnography, neither is it the deliberately unresolved multi-vocal juxtaposition that has been a celebrated part of the postmodern text in anthropology and beyond (e.g. Harrison et al. 2020). Where we describe specific events, conversations and interviews in which only one or other of us are present, we designate this presence through the use of our initials (SJ/TY). We write in the “ethnographic present” of our fieldwork (2010–2014), specifically about Historic Scotland. As discussed in the previous section, our account does not discuss HES despite the transfer of powers and significant continuities of personnel and practices. Where institutional structures (and names) changed during our fieldwork, we note these changes where relevant in the text and footnotes.

Introduction  19

Note 1 These include the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (2005) (Faro Convention), which Kisic ́ argues exemplify a discursive shift that links “heritage to concepts of intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity, rights to culture, pluralism, participation, change, sustainable development and reconciliation” (2016: 65; see also Brumann 2014: 178–179).

PART I

People

1 PRESENT PASTS

On the back of the door of a district works manager’s office is a cartoon. Next to a castle, it depicts a gift shop. The castle is being demolished so the gift shop can be expanded. “That just about sums it up!”, Ross, the district works manager, says with a mixture of wry humour and barely disguised anger. Having worked for Historic Scotland (HS) for over two decades, he admits to an “old school” approach in which he takes pride. The cartoon is indicative, as he sees it, of recent institutional changes and the priorities these engender. He explains the shift that he has witnessed since he joined one of the “works squads”, the teams now known as Monument Conservation Units (MCUs), responsible for the practical work of maintaining monuments, as an apprentice in the 1980s. In the past, as he sees it, monuments were conserved on the basis of their intrinsic worth, regardless of the cost of conserving them or the profit to be made through them. Increasingly they are managed according to criteria dictated by financial necessity. The cartoon parodies the shift to the point of absurdity: heritage is literally demolished to increase profit. In this chapter, we explore how those at HS describe recent shifts in conservation policy and practice, specifically as this has impacted on their work in a public sector organisation. Many of the changes we discuss relate to a now globally ubiquitous set of broadly neoliberal, late modern approaches promoting the linked ideas of fiscal austerity, marketisation, “participatory” ideologies and the valorisation of audit and transparency as ways to promote “good governance” (Bear and Marthur 2015: 38; DuGay 2007). Distinct from these changes but often mutually implicated are broad changes in the conservation sector, away from materially essentialist ideas about the intrinsic significance of the historic environment, towards “values-based” approaches linked to ideas about the socioeconomic benefits of the past (Cooper 2010; Emerick 2014; Pendlebury 2008; Waterton 2010). DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-3

24  People

Rather than narrate a history of the conservation sector (for which see Emerick 2014; Glendinning 2013; Jokilehto 1999; Waterton 2010), we explore how that historical context was narrated to us in ways that both reflect and create contemporary institutional realities. As a key strand of our analysis, we highlight how HS employees variously imagine institutional shifts in relation to previous organisational arrangements, working practices and conservation ideologies. Thus, we trace how institutional pasts emerge as a reflex of contemporary organisational realities: at times as negative characterisations of earlier approaches from which “progress” has been made; at others as positive and nostalgic visions that make evident what is lost or negatively transformed. In doing so, we reveal how institutional changes are understood and negotiated through invoking visions of the past. By contrast to linear, periodised understandings of changes in the Civil Service and the conservation sector, we foreground how present institutional realities are shadowed by institutional and professional pasts in temporal orientations that are dynamic and non-linear.

Re/valuing the past How should we value the past? To what extent should the historic environment be managed to reflect those “social values” (as referred to within HS discourses) attributed in the present, as opposed to those imagined as “intrinsic”? In relation to these issues, institutional discourses within HS at the time of our fieldwork reflected wider trends in heritage conservation and the public sector more generally (Emerick 2014; Waterton 2010). This section describes the main elements of these changes, as a prelude to subsequent sections where we focus on divergent interpretations of these shifts within HS. On the door of one of the regional Heritage Management Teams, a note reads “Excellent Problem Solvers!”. With ironic intent, it parodies a shift in professional culture that has been significant in HS, as in the UK Civil Service more generally. Paul DuGay (2000) charts the rise, from around the mid-1990s onwards, of a “new managerialist” discourse in the public sector as market ideologies took hold in the UK as in many other countries. Where previously, Civil Service bureaucratic ideals of objectivity and detachment were seen as central, they became increasingly displaced by a set of discourses celebrating a “cando” entrepreneurialism. Bureaucracy on this logic was increasingly imagined as obstructive or shorthand for inefficient forms of “red tape”. Coinciding with devolution and establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, these developments have been refracted through what is widely recognised as a “Scottish approach” to public policy and governance (Cairney et al. 2016). They point out that distinctiveness vis-à-vis Westminster is often strategically mobilised by the Scottish Government, but they also highlight underlying commonalities. For instance, Scottish officials continued as part of the UK’s Home Civil Service, and Scotland also adopted “modernising” management reforms popular in the late 1990s, including “leaner” hierarchies, “joined-up”

Present pasts  25

government, and better policymaking (Parry 2020: 387). As elsewhere in the UK, the Scottish public sector also saw a proliferation of regulatory and audit functions (Cairney et al. 2016: 340), nevertheless, much that is also genuinely distinctive (see contributors to Keating 2020). In particular, neoliberal reforms have been given a specific flavour via a strong focus on equality and fairness, health and wellbeing, sustainability and quality of life. The influence of the Public Value Leadership approach (Connolly and Pyper 2020: 428) led to a strong emphasis in both governance and policymaking on community empowerment and citizen participation for “public good”, alongside notions of efficiency and effectiveness usually associated with New Public Management (DuGay 2000). With the economy still suffering from the impact of the global financial crash of 2008, a senior manager of HS describes the need for “economic realism” associated with the idea that heritage “needs to pay its way”. We are talking during a tour of monuments in the Southwest Region, undertaken shortly after his appointment “to get a better understanding of the monuments, and to understand how things work”. In later middle age, Don is an unassuming man, a “grey suit” according to one of his colleagues, distinguishing him as a career civil servant, who came to HS with limited knowledge of the sector. Over the course of the two-day trip, it becomes clear how his arguments for “economic realism” are consistent with his specific commitment to “public good”: “increasing efficiency” is a way of achieving “tax-payer value for money”. Focusing energies on those monuments that are most visited and that generate most revenue is a “pragmatic” way to sustain conservation in the face of dwindling budgets. He also sees this as a form of democracy in its own right, aligning conservation priorities with public values. At a Neolithic standing stone that has recently toppled, he finds it hard to reconcile the large cost of re-erecting an archaeologically important monument that is out of the way and rarely visited. At an Iron Age fort, he is likewise sceptical that the large maintenance budget is warranted in light of visitor numbers that, he speculates, are likely to be low. These orientations engender the public value, outcome-oriented approach of the Scottish Government discussed above, albeit refracted through the lens of budget cuts and austerity. In the UK, neoliberal reform of the heritage sector emerged with the creation of English Heritage as a non-departmental public body in 1984, informed by the ideologies of the Thatcher government (Cooper 2010: 149). As a quango, the aim was to engender greater accountability to customers and stakeholders. Specialist building and conservation teams were privatised and cuts to core grants accompanied strong encouragements to develop income-generating activities. Malcolm Cooper, a former Chief Inspector at HS who was himself central to organisational reforms shortly before our research, describes how these profound changes led to new dilemmas: At a time of financial constraint, was it better to invest in a new visitor centre with its income-earning potential or to bring forward a masonry

26  People

conservation and repair programme, and how could you safely choose between such different propositions? (2010: 149) Natural and built heritage (along with arts and culture) is an area of devolved power. Changes to the national heritage body in Scotland not only laggedbehind those south of the border but took a distinctive path. HS remained part of the Civil Service until the Historic Environment Scotland Act 2014 created Historic Environment Scotland, an arm’s length non-departmental public body (with charitable status). Those we worked with during fieldwork were a mix of career civil servants and civil servants with specific technical expertise. HS’s annual corporate plans reflected the “Scottish approach” and spoke to the outcomes defined by the National Performance Framework (NPF). Similarly, the Scottish Historic Environment Policy (SHEP),1 the overarching governmental policy framework at the time of our research, exemplifies the ethos of the NPF: The historic environment is part of our everyday lives. It helps give us a sense of place, well-being and cultural identity. It enhances regional and local distinctiveness. It forges connections between people and the places where they live and visit. It helps make Scotland a great place to live and work. (Historic Scotland 2011: 5) SHEP echoes broader shifts at this time in the UK (Emerick 2014; Pendlebury 2008; Waterton 2010) and globally (Bortolotto et al. 2020). It describes the historic environment not only in terms of intrinsic or historic value but rather as a matter of actual and potential extrinsic values and benefits. Instrumental benefits of heritage are thus emphasised, for instance via contributions to the promotion of “economic development”, “regeneration”, “quality of life” and “environmental sustainability”. These broad shifts are given a specific inflection in the Scottish context, particularly in the few years leading up to the 2014 Referendum on Independence. In particular, the inherent value of heritage, culture and arts was stressed (in specific opposition to Westminster), alongside an emphasis on the role of heritage in cultural identity and place-making informed by an avowedly inclusive, civic nationalism. Central to SHEP is the alignment of historic and economic values: “We believe that the historic environment should be valued as an asset, rather than thought of as a barrier to development” (2009: 6). More generally and emphatically: The protection of the historic environment is not about preventing change. Ministers believe that change in this dynamic environment should be managed intelligently and with understanding, to achieve the best outcome for the historic environment and for the people of Scotland. (2009, emphasis in original)

Present pasts  27

An institutional emphasis on “inclusive” and “participatory” heritage is linked to a redefinition of the role of HS, as “facilitators” or “enablers”. Relatedly, focus shifts from managing objects to managing the values associated with them (Pendlebury 2008; Waterton 2010). As in other sectors and contexts, the discourse of “stakeholders” is central to this values-led approach (as we will explore in Chapter 9), even if methods and mechanisms for engagement have been relatively underdeveloped (Poulios 2010; Waterton 2010). John Pendlebury (2008) describes the current “age of consensus”, in which conservation is at once seen as an inevitable and widely accepted “good”, and one whose specific value is highly contested. Beyond these contradictions and conflicts, he well captures how a broad shift to emphasise the extrinsic value of heritage has occurred, without entirely surpassing an earlier set of discourses and professional commitments, based on intrinsic ideas about historic value and authenticity. As Kisic ́ (2016) points out, this is because international conservation instruments and national policy documents tend to build on, rather than displace, earlier foundational doctrinal texts (most notably the Venice Charter 1964). In consequence, Pendlebury suggests that the heritage sector faces a difficult challenge: to sustain its historic trajectory away from patrician elitism while sustaining core meaning and practices where appropriate. Pluralism, diversity, and the partial ‘letting go’ of power and control they imply, are inevitably a challenge for a practice traditionally expert-defined and led. (2008: 220) In this chapter (and elsewhere in this book), we aim to move beyond discursive accounts of these changes, to highlight how heritage professionals encounter, interpret and respond to these contradictions in specific practical circumstances. Conservation involves an active focus on the relationship between the past, present and future. In the following sections, we consider how institutional changes likewise precipitate reflections on the value and relevance of institutional pasts, along with consideration for their relevance to present circumstances.

Expertise in question Though controversial at the time of its passage through Parliament, Lord Lubbock’s Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882 was the culmination of an increasingly powerful movement during the Victorian period to better protect the nation’s heritage. As Simon Thurley, historian and former head of English Heritage, explains, it “provided for the appointment of one or more Inspectors of Ancient Monuments to oversee and provide advice on their protection” (2013: 41), a role first taken up by General Pitt Rivers. A leading British archaeologist, who also embraced social and physical anthropology, Pitt Rivers was noted for his evolutionary typological studies, as well as his development of “scientific” approaches to excavation. As the first Chief Inspector, he upheld and helped

28  People

consolidate the “monumental” approach to conservation, succinctly summarised by Keith Emerick as “a vision of the past based on the beliefs that value is inherent in fabric and sites and that the monument is the defining expression of the past in the present” (2014: 67). During our fieldwork in 2012, the name of the division known as the Inspectorate was changed to Heritage Management, echoed in a shift in job title from “inspectors” to “heritage managers”. The formal remit of heritage managers remained essentially the same, ensuring the designation, protection and regulation of the buildings and monuments deemed to be of national importance through the legislative instruments of “scheduling” and “listing”. Yet the change of name was seen by many as significant: the formal withdrawal of a role dating back to the 1882 Act, was commemorated within the (former) Inspectorate by a trip to the pub, accompanied by a life-sized cardboard cut-out of its first incumbent, General Pitt Rivers. Though memories of the occasion differ, one participant described it to us as a darkly humorous occasion, staged as a mock-funeral. An obvious symbol of the end of an era, the demise of the Inspectorate seemed to concretise a series of wider changes and brought into focus a range of orientations towards them. Significantly, the superseded Inspectorate was already a reformed version of two previously separate Inspectorates (merged in 2008) that respectively oversaw listed buildings and scheduled monuments. The cut-out of Pitt Rivers was brought along by colleagues from the former Ancient Monuments Inspectorate. Mostly coming from archaeological backgrounds, the figure of Pitt Rivers symbolised for them an affinity with the archaeological approach he represented, the “preserve as found” ethos of monument protection associated with the 1882 Act and a sense of their own increasing marginalisation within the institution, as a result of institutional reforms. By contrast, a former senior scheduled monuments inspector describes with incredulity how “most of the listed buildings people didn’t even know who Pitt Rivers was!”. Often trained in architectural history and guided by the less overtly protectionist principles of listed buildings legislation, the end of the Inspectorate represented a less obvious sense of loss for former listed building inspectors. Indeed, some welcomed the opportunities that accompanied this shift away from “monumental protection”, associated with ruinous structures, and towards the “management of change” that had always been more central to listed building legislation. Even amongst employees of the aforenamed Inspectorate, many saw positive dimensions to the change of name and role. An archaeologically trained heritage manager describes this as symbolic of a more inclusive approach, “less ‘the man from the ministry’, and the idea of ‘Hysteric Scotland’, a distant state that is always saying no and telling people what to do”. Brian, a heritage manager with conservation training in both archaeology and architectural history, is experienced but relatively young. He echoes policy documents and official institutional narratives, stressing the benefits of a more inclusive definition of heritage and is critical of an earlier era when experts had greater autonomy:

Present pasts  29

I don’t want to get into a kind of a taxpayer-speak, but in a way every job that is paid for by public money has to be necessary, doesn’t it? I think it’s very difficult to justify the idea that ‘this is my passion and I’m being paid by the Government to indulge it’, that’s quite difficult. Brian characterises the earlier authority of conservation experts as out-moded and elitist. Others are more ambivalent. With a PhD in archaeology, James, a heritage manager in one of the regional area teams, joined the organisation in the early 2000s. He initially worked in the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate where he was one of the last in his section to be appointed primarily on the basis of his archaeological expertise, a fact he highlights as significant in relation to changing expectations of the role. Though he echoes elements of Brian’s description, he also highlights an associated loss: That speciality was there to be drawn on when it was needed and it was a good thing for HS to say, look, we have experts in all these different fields working for us and advising us. There was an aspiration when I first started which saw [the HS Inspectorate] as being leaders of the sector […] So most of the people that were employed […] were seen as at least being accomplished in their field, and I think that was part of not only the identity of the Inspectorate, but also how it saw itself influencing and being placed within the wider sector. James is not alone in emphasising how recent changes have involved a diminishment of expertise that leads to a loss of influence and leadership. Along with these changing institutional structures, there was an increasing shift in the qualities valued in employees: away from specialist disciplinary expertise (whether archaeological, historical or architectural history) to those more generic “transferrable” skills of institutional “problem-solving”. New appointments were increasingly made with these qualities in mind. “Flexibility” was encouraged and rewarded by moving people more quickly between roles. Evident in James’ description, is the point that such shifts are not straightforwardly associated with a transfer of power from experts to the public. As has been noted elsewhere (Cooke and Kothari 2001), “participatory” approaches more often involve a redistribution of expertise than an absolute undermining; a transfer of power from those who claim to know things with authority to those who claim authority through speaking on behalf of other “publics”, “stakeholders” and “communities” (Waterton 2010; themes developed in Chapter 9). Critical accounts of recent transformations at HS highlight various understandings of what is lost along with the sense of disempowerment that some parts of the institution feel. Though differences of attitude are not straightforwardly generational, these reservations were disproportionately expressed by those who had been employed for longer.

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Elaine, a former ancient monuments inspector nearing retirement, develops some of these themes, reflecting on these institutional developments. There certainly are those […] who would say that the demise of the inspector is a good thing. They think they [Ancient Monuments Inspectorate] were uppity people who thought that they knew everything and felt that they had more weight than they should have […] We never perceived ourselves in that way […]. We perceived ourselves as being passionate advocates of ancient monuments and we felt that we were there to try and help protect the resource for the future, so if the civil servants were saying to us, ‘you must do Y’, we would argue from the position of, ‘well, that’s not in the best interests of the monument going forward’. An argument for the intrinsic value of ancient monuments relates to an argument for the importance of specialists as advocates for them. It grounds an ethical commitment to long-term protection, as against a range of powerful contemporary interests, including the politicians and senior managers who have advocated these changes and other powerful stakeholders who benefit from this. As she sees it, the opposition is not between a top-down version of heritage and a more inclusive one but between different understandings of how the public interest is best served. Harry spent the first half of his career as a field archaeologist before being appointed to the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate around 2000. Speaking to TY after his retirement, he reflects on the changes that happened during this period: I got promoted to a senior inspector which gave me quite a bit more money and quite a lot more things to do and at the same time I found myself being excluded by people of my grade who were say ten years younger. And I know I was being perceived as […] the last of the dinosaurs, the last the Mohicans, maybe in that I had experience of fieldwork, and I regarded archaeological knowledge as the thing we were conserving, rather than conforming to policy. There was an increasing gulf between the part of the inspectorate that I was involved in who did things like spend money [on research] and that part of the Inspectorate who I felt should be learning from the new knowledge bought with my money but who appeared not to be. They seem to have a deep understanding of policy but not of the purpose of preserving this past. Echoing sentiments that were common amongst long-standing members of the former Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, he describes the problems that result from the marginalisation of disciplinary expertise. An increasing concern with policy and process is seen to displace the preservationist concerns and commitments that stem from these more archaeologically orientated forms of knowledge.

Present pasts  31

The role of experts is newly in question in heritage conservation (Hølleland and Skrede 2018), as in a range of other contexts (Collins and Evans 2007; Schon 2013 [1983]). If this sense of crisis is not entirely new (Schon 2013 [1983]), it is nonetheless specific. John Schofield’s edited volume (2014) poses the rhetorical question “Who needs experts?”, answering this in a range of ways that reflect an increasing consensus in critical heritage studies: if the significance of the past is an artefact of the values people give to it, their role is reconfigured in more “participatory” terms as a form of facilitation (Hølleland and Skrede 2018). Bracketing normative questions as to what the role of conservation experts can legitimately be, our account highlights how heritage professionals re-imagine their own role in relation to these changes. This perspective reveals how broader challenges to expertise are situated in a range of specific ways, associated with redefinitions of the role of heritage professionals, and of the nature and value of the historic environments they manage. We have highlighted how values-based approaches reconfigure intrinsic understandings of heritage, without entirely displacing them (Kisic ́ 2016). These contradictory versions of the aims and remit of conservation are threaded through the working lives of conservation professionals as a range of conflicts and contradictions.

“Going deep with the paper” During an interview with the Head of Conservation and Maintenance (2010), she describes how her own work has changed in response to some bigger institutional changes. As a conservation architect, responsible for managing an organisational shift to “greater accountability”, her narrative is one of institutional “progress”: improved documentation is linked to improved transparency and better decision-making: We have to actually record why we’re doing something […] We’ve not been good at that in the past […] Yes, I can find the mortar mix, and yes, I can find which stones were replaced, and you might even find a discussion about why this stone’s very important. But actually why are we making this intervention wasn’t always explicit. The point is not just to create a record of what happens, but to document how and why decisions were made. Changes at HS can be understood in relation to the more general development of an “audit culture” in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, in particular, the imperative to make explicit what had previously worked implicitly (Strathern 2000). These shifts have been traced to the more distributed forms of governance associated with an ostensibly smaller yet more pervasive state (Rose 1999), in which the boundaries between “public” and “private” spheres are increasingly blurred. The value of public institutions and experts that could once be assumed now has to be demonstrated through what Marilyn Strathern (2000)

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has termed “rituals of verification”. New forms of audit are associated with new ways of imagining “society” and “the public”, rendered as ethical subjects and arbiters of institutional performance (Hull 2012a: 260; Strathern 2000). While the effects of these transformations are recent and ongoing, Emerick highlights much earlier antecedents in UK state conservation. As early as 1911 Charles Peers’ introduction of a Chief Inspector’s annual report represented “the birth of the civil service auditing and management procedures: the creation of an institution for which accountability was now a key part of monument work” (2014: 64). More recently concerns with transparency have been driven both by the broader shifts to “participatory democracy”, as engendered in devolved government policy and as a specific response to the 2009 public controversies surrounding Castle Tioram and Rowallan Castle (Cooper 2013). While these cases were much debated within HS, many acknowledged the reputational damage that resulted. In the words of one senior heritage manager, they reinforced a perception of the organisation as “naysayers opposed to change and development” and heightened internal understandings of the need to be seen as accountable. In the case of HS, these broader logics have had a range of specific institutional consequences. The start of the twenty-first century saw growing demands to apply formal scrutiny and consent to work undertaken on HS’s Properties in Care (PiCs), extending the forms of regulation which had previously only applied to work on listed buildings and scheduled monuments owned by external parties. By 2010, the Properties in Care Clearance (PiCC) process had been in place for a few years, which in the words of one senior manager put “clear blue water” between those involved in conserving the national estate (the Conservation directorate) and those responsible for regulating work on these designated monuments (Heritage Management). Concerns with audit and accountability intersect with conservation practice in a range of ways, articulated in various discourses about what is gained and lost through these changes. Speaking as civil servants, HS employees commonly describe moves to improve public accountability and enable greater scrutiny as a good in its own right. The Head of Understanding and Access acknowledges the need for a process that, “would stand scrutiny from the outside world”, and “be even squeakier clean than externally”. She sets out the wider context to these concerns in broader societal shifts: “The general malaise which is present in our society of not quite trusting civil servants […] I think that in relation to that, we ought to be able to answer our critics”. Likewise, greater documentation and attention to formal processes can be seen as a way of improving internal processes of decision making. One senior heritage manager, for instance, contrasts a previous “over-reliance on [institutional] folk memory”, to the current emphasis on “capturing the argument” through formal documentation. A dependence on potentially fallible individuals gives way to processes that make knowledge available, regardless of personnel: “There’s more documentation but to my mind that is a good thing […] The trail is there to follow”. Angela, a cultural

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resources officer responsible for interpretation at PiCs, relates an increasing focus on “transparency” to new forms of documentation: I think, absolutely crucial so that in 20, 30, 40 years’ time our successors can come back and see, all right we know that piece of stone was put in 2012, or we know that that area was dug up in 2005, so it’s not a problem if we want to put a new interpretation panel in there, because we’ve already excavated it and recorded it and it’s fine. She connects the benefits of increased public accountability, to an improved “record” and better “evidence”. The formal nature of the clearance process is also positively linked to “objectivity” (an ideal discussed in Chapter 4) and to “evidence-based” decisions. Susan, a senior member of the Conservation directorate, explains how increasing documentation enhances understanding and can enable greater sensitivity: It was in people’s heads. It was the mason who came round and he went, ‘Yeah, see that bit over there, that’s got a bit worse, remember that, we looked at that last year.’ Now we’ve got photographs, we’ve got all the statements, so we can actually go in and say, ‘Look, there you go, deterioration from there to there’, or, ‘Actually, nothing’s changed.’ These positive assessments of audit emerge alongside a range of more ambivalent orientations. Having worked for HS for over 20 years, Susan points out that “there’s never one answer”, highlighting the problems of attempts to codify practice: You can’t write a book that says every time you point it will look like this and you’ll do this and this […] It depends on the stone, it depends on the location, it depends how much of the building is left. By curtailing “judgement” and “sensitivity”, paperwork can undermine sensitivity to the specificities of particular buildings. Audit is understood to undercut discretion by attempting to codify processes that work by other logics. Susan explains how the recent emphasis on “transparency” has undermined tacit knowledge and trust One of the biggest obstacles was the definition of routine maintenance [in the context of PiCC] […] It had to be pinned down so tightly that it could apply anywhere. And that caused quite a lot of angst […] The inspector’s standing in line and saying, ‘this is what routine maintenance is’ and us going, ‘yeah but we’ve always done this, trust us’ […] And trying to find somewhere in the middle that made that accountable has actually been quite difficult.

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This idea that the practical work of conservation involves tacit knowledge that can be stifled by moves to codify and explicate is particularly marked amongst the architects and those directly responsible for practical maintenance work at PiCs. On one occasion a regional works manager, originally trained as a stonemason, jokes, “we haven’t got consent to sneeze”, outlining how urgent maintenance problems are delayed by formal consent processes, leading to further damage. He describes the paradox that “stuff we added in the 1980s can’t be repaired without consent”. Audit is often understood to increase “bureaucracy” in the pejorative sense of empty and unnecessary proliferation of documentation that requires managing (see Chapter 6) and displaces other more “useful” activities. Graham, a district architect, suggests that going “too deep with the paper” negates the “bit by bit process” of conservation: Each stone, never mind each part of the building, needs a different thought process because it’s literally bit by bit, by bit, literally like building up a big painting with lots of dots and so you can’t do it all on paper. If too much is formalised and codified, the building’s “voice” becomes lost, Graham explains. Many at HS are ambivalent in their assessments of a set of profound transformations that are recognised to produce problems in some respects alongside improvements in others. Narratives about the impact of audit temporalise a series of interlinked shifts, characterising past and present ways of working through a range of interlinked contrasts: from the informal to the informal; the tacit to the explicit; interpretation to procedures. In practice, these contrasts represent orientations and practices which are mutually implicated and must, in the words of one informant, be “balanced”. Yet the benefits and difficulties are not evenly spread, and distinct assessments partly reflect the variable ways in which these impact on practices across the organisation. Nostalgic and critical orientations to what has been lost, often go hand in hand with narratives of “transparency” as a form of institutional “progress”.

“Change fatigue” In the office of the Director of Heritage Management, two quotes are pinned to the notice board side by side: the first attributed to Barack Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the ones that we seek”. Next to this, an un-attributed quote reads, “Historic Scotland says no!”. The message of these juxtaposed quotes is implicit but clear: of the need for institutional modernisation, away from a focus on prevention and protection, towards a focus on the wider interests of society and the economy. Our fieldwork was undertaken over a period where people commonly spoke of “change fatigue”, highlighting the sense of disorientation and disruption associated with the seemingly perpetual movement of institutional systems and structures.

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With a PhD in archaeology, Dora worked in the former Ancient Monuments Inspectorate but left HS shortly before our research started to take up an academic post. She describes her own sense of disorientation following a significant phase of reform: There was the big restructuring. It was quite funny in retrospect. But it was all a big secret. We didn’t know what was happening. We all had to shuffle our way into a big lecture theatre […]. And it was like a very business-like meeting. And we were all basically told what was going to happen, and then as we left the room, we were given a brochure that explained the new organisation and what our new jobs were going to be. I ended up with the dullest job ever. It was honestly awful! Her feelings of personal disorientation and loss had their counterpart in broader experiences of institutional loss and discombobulation, associated with rapid and far-reaching change: I remember trying to see, well, where is this stuff going to feature? That stuff that we only yesterday thought was important and we were putting an effort into, it just all disappeared and we weren’t allowed to do it. […] It was a horrible transition to go through. Very difficult if you thought these other things still had some value and ought to fit into the mix somewhere. In relation to the reformist approaches that have come to prominence in the UK public sector from the 1980s onwards, DuGay discusses how “change” has increasingly come to be seen as an unalloyed good associated with “creative opportunity”. In this now pervasive approach “[t]he key dichotomy is between the ossified ‘old’, which is in need of urgent ‘re-invention’, and the ‘visionary’ new, whose demands must be heeded or disaster will result” (2007: 139). On this logic, change is not only the means to the end of new and “better” institutional futures but also an end in itself – a way to engender an “agile”, “creative” and “resilient” workforce. Dora describes how institutional shifts, led to changes in roles, with implications for the qualities that were sought through appointments and promotions: People suddenly started moving around a lot more. With all the restructuring positions became available that didn’t exist, so people went up this way and they went across that way. There was a lot of mobility up and across that didn’t exist before […] Of course it was part of the ethos that you would be able to just be more flexible. This tendency to reward “adaptability” and “flexibility”, both arose from and promoted the shift from valuing disciplinary expertise, to valuing institutional process. As described elsewhere (above and Chapter 5), the kinds of disciplinary

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training and specialism that had previously been valued, were increasingly seen as less significant and indeed as barriers to institutional mobility and flexibility required and engendered through these new ways of working. New roles and institutional terminologies are future-oriented, intended to bring about the changes they describe. As we have already seen, the shift from inspectors to heritage managers, engendered a novel sense of the role as increasingly facilitatory and “public-facing”. Similarly, the former works squads were renamed as Monument Conservation Units, in a move to convey a more “professional” working identity. Old terminologies persist at HS in the face of new ones, sometimes out of inertia and habit, but often as forms of active resistance. Long after the formal changes of names, people continued to refer to “inspectors” and “works squads”, reflecting the continued affinity for older institutional identities and roles. Outdated organisational charts remained in circulation, pinned to notice boards that, through choice or oversight, bore testament to obsolete institutional structures. Filing systems routinely reflected old terminologies and structures, material legacies of older classification systems and ways of thinking, in some cases long since replaced. One archaeologically trained former inspector describes how her routine work involves encounters with these historic forms of institutional material culture, in particular, the distanced intimacy of handwritten memos, sketches and signatures, which engendered “fascination and respect for the work of predecessors”. On one occasion a member of the Cultural Resource Team points to an organisational diagram pinned to the wall: “We call them bubbles”, he explains, joking but serious, pointing to the circles on the chart that denote the organisational sections and teams. “They just float in the air and come to rest wherever they want!”. As someone who was recently moved, his comments express his sense of the arbitrariness of these changes, and a fatalistic feeling of disempowerment. Others are more actively and openly critical of the logics these engender. A senior member of Collections is nearing retirement having spent most of his working life at HS. He describes the “plug and play” approach that has developed over the past decade or so and reservations relating to some of the institutional consequences: “People get moved around without always having a chance to establish themselves”. Contrasting this with the organisation as it was when he joined in the early 1980s, he describes how there is less time to build up expertise, a failure to fully appreciate the “complex ecology” of informal relationships; a lack of understanding of the value of tacit knowledge is thereby displaced. His views illustrate a broader concern that changes imposed from above tend, deliberately or unwittingly, to overlook the value of what already exists, specifically those elements of institutional practice that cannot be easily codified. What seems from a managerial perspective as resistance to progress, can be seen by others as a managerial failure to understand what is already positive about the way things were. Tacit and informal elements of practice are newly valued, as they are seen to be newly in threat. The spectre of change makes the value of continuity explicit.

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In the face of profound and rapid change, experiences of anachronism are common and pervasive, framing various understandings of the problems and possibilities of older working practices. Though managers are sometimes critical of those who fail to “keep up”, anachronism is also seen in more active and positive efforts to resist these changes. In various ways, people seek to redefine the present and future of institutional practice through recovering or persisting with orientations that are formally superseded.

Ambivalent nostalgias On one occasion we accompany two heritage managers on a site visit, stopping at a pub for lunch. A now rare occurrence in a generally frenetic working life, our stop is brief, a modest meal quickly consumed with soft drinks. Set in a picturesque Borders’ village, with views to rolling hills beyond, the pub’s decor seems also intended to evoke a former time. Low-beamed ceilings are painted black; stuffed trout and fly-fishing paraphernalia adorn the walls. “This is how it would have been in the good old days of inspecting”, James jokes, gesturing towards a temporally unspecified, more leisurely “heyday” when cafes and pubs loomed large in the monument visits of inspectors and architects. Institutionally James’ wry allusions present a kind of progress, from an earlier era here characterised by waste, excess, idleness and relatively un-checked privilege. However, personally, it is also a narrative of professional loss. Relative to this “golden age” James sees his own role as one of unrelenting demands, stress, limited funds, and diminished institutional status. Brian responds in turn, commenting playfully that new institutional rules on expenses put even the starters beyond their budget. He goes on to recall the leaving speech given by an inspector on retirement, lamenting the passing of this era and expressing his pity for those still doing the job. Svetlana Boym describes nostalgic orientations as “side-effects of the teleology of progress” (2001: 11), highlighting how visions of different, better pasts emerge dialectically in relation to understandings of the difficulties and differences that modernisation brings. Ideas of nostalgia can take many forms but are always in some sense about a longing for what is lacking in current circumstances (Ange and Berliner 2014). Personal and institutional nostalgia at HS can be seen as the expression of ambivalences to contemporary working life that takes a range of forms. Accounts of the now anachronistic sensibilities of an earlier heyday can be consistent with ideas of institutional “progress”, even as these are also tinged with sentimentality arising from a perceived sense of individual loss, focusing on diminished status and the relative difficulties of current working conditions. Heritage managers at times lament the difficulties of their own working lives along with a loss of status and authority, even though they have no hope of returning to these times and in many cases no desire. These nostalgias are in this respect more wistful more than wishful. By contrast, nostalgic orientations to older Civil Service ideals often have a more openly critical orientation (cf. Stewart 1988), arising from ideas about the

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detrimental consequences of recent institutional changes. We see these during Annual Monument Audit (AMA) meetings, regular assessments of the condition of PiCs that bring together different parts of the organisation responsible for their conservation and maintenance (and see Chapter 3 for further discussion of such meetings and Chapter 6 for the role of fieldwork). At Sweetheart Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery founded in 1275, Grant, a heritage manager, remarks on a neatly manicured lawn, with chequerboard stripes and carefully trimmed edges. After our tour of the building is complete, we meet the man responsible for this and other basic maintenance on site. An elderly man with thick-rimmed glasses and an HS boiler suit, he seems, as the regional architect remarks, “from another era”. Peter, the regional works manager overseeing the MCUs, later describes him as a “custodian in the true sense of the word”, as he reflects nostalgically on “the good old days when everything happened in-house and the monuments were immaculate”. His account is inflected by an openly acknowledged nostalgia borne of frustrations with an organisation that no longer seems to represent these values. It may also reflect changes in his own role and working practices: during the time of our fieldwork, outsourcing and budget cuts fed rumours of possible job losses in the maintenance departments. Later, at Threave Castle, a fourteenth-century tower house surrounded by a lake, Peter gestures to the grass: patches have been “sculpted”; others left too long, the edges untrimmed. It highlights, as he sees it, a broader problem: where maintenance is increasingly outsourced to private contractors, the motive of profit is associated with “cost-cutting” and a “general lack of care”. His ambivalences to these changes are registered in reflections on an earlier time when maintenance was done in-house by committed public servants who “put the monument first”. Positive narratives of earlier institutional practices arise from ambivalences to recent institutional changes and give expression to what is thereby lost. Nostalgic imaginaries of past institutional practices are not just artefacts of change but are socially transformative ways to understand, interpret and respond to these (following Atia and Davies 2010; Dames 2010). Often these are wistfully oriented, expressions of loss for things that cannot be retrieved. Such “reflective nostalgias” (Boym 2001) at times spill over into a more overtly interventionist or “restorative” orientation. Images of the past concretise a sense of collective identity, provide a rallying point for resistance and are implicated in critically interpreting organisational changes. Amongst other things, visions of older ways of working are invoked to support calls for a return to a more protectionist approach, a more central focus on the intrinsic value and significance of conservation objects, greater respect for professional expertise, and for slower more careful working practices. As a former inspector, commented: “We looked constantly to a new future, but always aware of the Inspectorate legacy and responsibilities”. The conservationist logic that guides the preservation of the past is recursively seen in employees’ attitudes to their own institutional past.

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Crisis and continuity Employees at HS, especially those working with PiCs, often invoke a received history that situates their own actions as an extension of a longer “conservation tradition”, encompassing a set of ideals traced back to the nineteenth century. Susan, Head of Conservation and Maintenance, locates the present approach as part of a wider international conservation movement, inspired by nineteenthcentury thinkers: “We’re still following the same kind of guidance we’ve had for decades – it’s all about international charters, minimal intervention, reversibility, authenticity, matching materials, making sure we do the best for the site”. Catherine is Head of Understanding and Access, when we speak with her in 2010, responsible for the team that promotes public engagement and understanding of PiCs. Asked to describe the organisation’s approach to conservation, she similarly sets this out as the culmination of a longer historical process that “developed over 150 years”. This history starts with reference to the “heavy restorations” of the nineteenth century, alluding to what are now seen as excessive architectural interventions, criticised and opposed by Ruskin, Morris and other members of the conservation movement (as discussed earlier and also Chapter 2). The state’s entry into this arena is signalled by reference to the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882, leading to the concept of “guardianship” and to the foundation of the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate. This is followed by successive international charters in the twentieth century, which consolidate a “best practice” conservation doctrine encapsulated as she sees it by HS’s approach: The current policy is based on all of that international movement and looking at it, it’s […] about saying what you have in the building is the evidence of the past and it’s the evidence of the past that can go on informing you and, if you tinker with that you lose it, you change it, you alter, how it appears, but also you’re actually losing something that you might have been able to hold for the next generation. They, deserve to be able to see it too. We see it as stewardship, taking the monuments that we have in care through to the next generation and having as little impact on them as possible, but maximising how people understand that and see it and, get what they can from it. Stewardship implies a moral duty to make the past accessible to people but also to pass it on to future generations through protecting it from change and upholding minimal intervention in the process of curtailing decay. The authenticity of the thing itself is linked to evidence manifested in material fabric, revealing originality that would be lost or jeopardised through change (see Chapter 2 for further discussion of these ideas). Such accounts foreground continuity with conservation’s own past via a set of principles and philosophies that are understood to be unchanging. However, even to the extent, these principles can be said to “remain”, they do so in a

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professional context that has fundamentally changed and continues to develop. Continuity with these earlier ideals, therefore, is not a passive product of inertia: it must be made and re-imagined in relation to contemporary changes, challenges and threats. In a conference room at Edinburgh Castle, a short taxi ride away from their offices at Longmore House, 20 or so HS employees have gathered to consider the future of Lochmaben and Cadzow Castle, two sites that raise profound and pressing questions of more general relevance for the organisation. The grandeur of the room seems intended to convey the extraordinary nature of these discussions. Unusually, many are dressed in suits and ties. Those invited have been selected to represent key differences of role, perspective and expertise. Formal presentations are led by delegates from the Conservation Directorate, including Bruce, the Head of Estates, and the architects responsible for the practical maintenance of these monuments. Mostly with backgrounds in archaeology and history, those in Understanding and Access, bring detailed knowledge of the monuments’ cultural value and historic significance. Heritage Managers are here to highlight issues relating to the regulation and consent of work to these monuments. While both sites are seen as “atypical” in terms of the severity of the conservation issues raised, they are presented as “case studies” for broader and more profound problems facing the organisation, which are expected to become more acute in the near future. Bruce makes this broader context explicit in a sternly grave speech that introduces the symposium: “Most of us visiting the sites think they’re deteriorating”. Lochmaben and Cadzow engender specific conservation problems, including unconsolidated walls that are structurally unsound and prone to erosion, difficulties of high-level access, and weak mortar. Large areas of both are shut off to protect the public from dangerous forms of decay. Routine maintenance programmes have been unable to check the damage of erosion. The parlous state of both concretises a broader sense of “crisis”: existing monumental approaches associated with the stabilisation of conservation objects “as found”, are increasingly challenged in the face of new threats and decreased institutional capacity. Major post-World War Two consolidation programmes are starting to reach the end of their life, as climate change exacerbates decay through wetter and more extreme weathering that increases erosion; at the same time, maintenance capacity is diminished by decreased budgets and the “huge impact of additional bureaucracy”. He lists these impacts, describing significant reductions in staff time for monument conservation due to increased work on health and safety compliance, HR management and meeting new statutory obligations including in relation to fire regulations, asbestos, legionella and electrical safety. Collectively, these challenge existing approaches to monument conservation and foreground a set of dilemmas that are simultaneously acknowledged to be “practical” and “philosophical”. Bruce concludes: “We’re going to have to work differently. Do some things that go against the grain – go against what we think we are here to do – I can’t see any alternative to that”. Though he professes not to have

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the answer, he is clear about the problems of the existing status quo: “The oldfashioned ancient monuments approach of turning everything into a standing ancient monument is not sustainable”. Doubts about the future of these sites highlight doubts about the future of existing conservation approaches. Chris, the district architect responsible for Lochmaben gives a presentation using slides to illustrate some of the key problems and dilemmas at the site: “What’s authentic? You might say not much!”. Over the years decay and some heavy restorations have compromised the monument’s fabric and form. In the face of this, he wonders, “What are we trying to retain?”. Questions of how to retain the monument relate to questions of what to retain of their own approach to conservation: “Previous approaches focused on retaining the site as it came to us. Was this correct, given the high level of intervention previously required?”. He wonders if a less purist, more interventionist approach to “conserve as found”, could have led to better long-term preservation? For each of the sites, different alternative scenarios are imagined as a response to declining resources, ranging from burial to structural consolidation. If these sites engender a sense of rupture with their own institutional past, they also present a context in which to re-establish continuity. Bruce explicitly highlights the need for new approaches that are consistent with existing principles: “What we decide is not entirely within our gift. It needs to be consistent with the Ancient Monuments Act and our legislative and statutory obligations”. Debates foreground disagreements about which conservation principles should be prioritised, and the degree to which future scenarios represent legitimate interpretations of these underlying philosophies. For instance, reburial represents an inexpensive way to conserve material fabric and “authenticity” but compromises the “readability” of the monument and loss of public access. Should short-term public access be prioritised over the long-term survival of the monument? Is it legitimate to reduce the height of existing walls, if this enables a maintenance programme that can reduce further decay and make the monument safe for visitors? Even apparently radical scenarios are tied back to the precedent of existing principles. Adam, a member of the policy unit, summarises his thoughts during the concluding discussion: Even one day this planet will have gone! It’s impossible to conserve the monument as it is for reasons of resource and technical capability. It’s about the management of the walking away – we have to decide that unpalatable as it might be, we sometimes have to walk away. He urges a form of controlled “letting go” (in terms that echo DeSilvey 2017), an acceptance of the loss of fabric that has previously been seen as unacceptable. Though he ties this back to an established conservation principle, he does so with an irony that expresses the unprecedented nature of what they are contemplating in darkly humorous terms: “I mean it’s a form of minimum intervention!”

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Everyone laughs. Their collective efforts to imagine the future draw from past principles, even though they also challenge and threaten these. Similar tensions and issues arise in a range of more quotidian contexts, including at AMAs, yearly meetings to assess the state of repair at HS’ PiCs. At one of these, a nationally important castle, a district works manager comments that “nature is taking over”; the proximate context of an overgrown turret conveying a more general understanding of their inability to undertake the kinds of maintenance that were once routine. On another, a district architect comments on the number of issues and items where the “action” column lists “monitor” or “carry forward”, terms that convey a sense of oversight, management and control, but which can also become euphemisms for inaction in the absence of resources to intervene. Later, half-joking, he describes his job as “managing decline”, conveying the irony of his role in overseeing the decline of buildings, whilst his ability to manage this process decreases with diminishing resources. On another AMA, we stop to examine a roof that is leaking, with water ingress that is minor, but a potential threat to the fabric in the chapel below. The regional heritage manager, an archaeologist by training, sees this as a reflection of a broader problem recounting a throwaway comment made, as he puts it, “by a senior inspector on a bad day”: “We are managing change by presiding over decline”. Said and then invoked in jest, the phrase is clearly a parody but highlights a real and pressing sense of intractability: of principles that can no longer be applied in the way they were. Understandings of conservation as a form of progress are developed within HS in a range of ways, as the sector more generally. Malcolm Cooper well captures this broad orientation: Narratives relating to the development of cultural resource management in England and Scotland are commonly unidirectional and improving in nature. Regular themes include the development of a heritage community and its professionalization; the increasing effectiveness of this sector at influencing both public opinion and government; the development over time of stronger heritage legislation and policy; and the improvement of heritage organizations and their processes to allow more effective implementation of the cultural resource management system envisaged by the legislation and policy. (2010: 143) Ideas of improvement inflect some of the institutional narratives we have already encountered, including those that render recent institutional shifts as a move in the direction of greater democracy, participation and accountability. Alongside these, discourses of decline link understandings of diminished institutional capacity to increasing levels of decay in the conservation objects they care for. Beyond the routine problems encountered at specific sites, these raise profound doubts about the long-term viability of those principles on which the modern conservation movement was founded. The cases of Cadzow and Loch

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Maben concretise anxieties about the unprecedented nature of these threats and their implications for the future of the organisation, the principles that underpin their work and the monuments they care for. Even as these perceptions of material and institutional discontinuity stimulate acts of reflection and reinvention, these are tied to the precedents of existing conservation principles. In the face of changes regarded as unprecedented, conservation professionals recursively employ a conservationist orientation to their own practices, seeking to unfold new possibilities from their institutional pasts and the “traditions” they inherit. Their efforts to anticipate radically different futures are shaped by reference to what has come before.

Conclusion: shadowed by the past Understandings of present institutional realities emerge through invocations of the past. Through the accounts of HS employees, we have shown how present circumstances are made sense of through contrasts with previous approaches and working practices, both as negatively inflected circumstances from which “improvement” is traced and as forms of nostalgia that arise from disenchantment with present working practices. In various ways, these pasts are implicated in people’s efforts to understand and locate themselves in the present, to both justify change and resist it. More and less explicitly these pasts are projected in response to the problems and possibilities that people face in their daily work. They also relate to a more profound set of anxieties about the present and future of conservation in light of changes that are seen as existential threats to their underpinning principles. Invocations of institutional history are artefacts of change and the means by which change is made apparent (Strangleman 1999). In this respect, we have highlighted the recursive logic by which heritage professionals engender a conservationist orientation to their own institutional pasts. As with the historic environments they manage, this often involves an active effort to configure the present with respect to the past, even in the face of present and future circumstances that radically threaten the aim of maintaining continuity. While others have described these historical shifts in the conservation sector in more general terms (Emerick 2014; Schofield 2014; Thurley 2013), we have sought to show how broader institutional transformations are refracted in individually and professionally specific ways. At HS, discourses of audit, austerity and the “participatory” challenge to professional authority, intersect with a set of more specific conservationist ideals relating to “minimal intervention” and the curation of decay. The work of conservation is re-made and re-imagined in contexts of public sector reforms and financial cuts that threaten the organisation’s ability to uphold these ideals. At the same time, broader institutional shifts are transformed and understood in light of prior commitments and professional identities. The uptake or resistance to institutional reform relates to differential assessments of the degree to which these enhance or undermine conservationist principles (Cooper 2013).

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DuGay highlights how “‘Modernization’, just like ‘Re-Invention’, relies on a series of epochal oppositions and dualities in which the discontinuity between past and future is highlighted” (2007: 149). He is describing a periodised view of the past, associated with change-oriented managerialist ideologies, though arguably scholarly accounts have often engendered a similar temporal logic. We have shown how such temporal periodisations are intrinsic to various institutional discourses, where a sense of temporal rupture informs positive assessments of institutional “progress” as well as the epochal understandings of threatening discontinuity that coalesce in discussions of Cadzow and Lochmaben. Yet taken at face value, such historical periodisations belie how institutional pasts, presents and futures intersect in dynamic and non-linear relations. New Public Management approaches resituate without entirely supplanting the bureaucratic ideals of an earlier age. Though these pasts are sometimes invoked wistfully, they also present alternative visions that can be sites of everyday resistance to managerial change and ways to imagine alternative institutional futures. These visions are at once retrospective projections from present anxieties and prospective commitments to alternative ways of working in the future. In this way, our account challenges linear narratives of the history of conservation as a series of discrete eras oriented by distinct philosophical orientations. We have seen in these daily working practices how ostensibly distinct paradigms intersect, how the past is invoked variously as a form of critique, as a way to present alternative possibilities within contemporary institutional realities, as well as to highlight or support “positive” change from what was previously problematic. While these institutional pasts take a range of specific forms, our account highlights how New Public Management approaches and a shift towards “valuesbased” conservation are associated with a central but ambivalent focus on an earlier modernist age. In particular, modernist ideals of bureaucratic conduct emerge both as positive and problematic spectre that shadows a set of practices perceived to have a very different character and quality. Resonating with broader popular characterisations of bureaucracy, such pasts can be associated with the high-handedness of an out-of-touch bureaucracy, cold and unsympathetic to the public, encapsulated in negative stereotypes of “The Man from the Ministry” (Thurley 2013). Sometimes this elitism is associated with bureaucratic inefficiency and wastefulness that is the perceived antithesis of market efficiency and accountability. Yet this bureaucratic ideal also relates to a range of more positive understandings, in particular of an organisation that was better able to support the conservation of the historic environment where decisions were isolated from a market imperative and driven by more purely conservationist principles. These are not so much “nostalgias of the modern” (Davis 1979) but nostalgias for it (Özyürek 2006). Nostalgia is not for a “traditional” past, transformed by modernity, but for the perceived certainties of a modernist (mid-twentieth-century) conservation “heyday”, projected from present uncertainties of early twentyfirst-century institutional reform alongside looming future crises, fiscal, environmental and otherwise. In these and other ways, contemporary conservation

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practice remains shadowed by its own past, in reinvented traditions that help to make sense of present institutional realities and inform imagined futures.

Note 1 This was the key policy document, setting out Scottish Ministers policies for the management and protection of the historic environment, along with the underpinning rationale, and providing policy directives for Historic Scotland. There are multiple versions in the SHEP series. First introduced as multiple free-standing documents in response to an HS review in 2003–04, these were amalgamated into a single document in 2008. During our fieldwork the versions in use were the 2009 and 2011 revised documents. SHEP was superseded in 2019 by the Historic Environment Policy for Scotland (HEPS).

2 WORKING FROM THE PAST

What kind of person is a conservation professional? What professional orientations and personal qualities are required to do the job? In 1931, nearing retirement, Charles Peers, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for the UK, wrote of those employed in his service, celebrating [t]he […] united effort of a small body of archaeologists and architects belonging to that great anonymous society, the Civil Service. Mute, modest and meritorious they are in these present times, the authentic successors of those monastic orders whose relics they study to preserve. (Peers 1931: 1) It is an idealised account, a valedictory statement by a leading civil servant, relating to a very different era. Even so, the professional ideals of muteness and modesty remain salient today. Even as HS employees acknowledge professional differences and disagreements, they commonly highlight shared commitments to a “conservation approach”. In this chapter, we explore how conservation professionals explain these common orientations and describe how these are elaborated in relation to the different forms of knowledge and role present within the institution. Though our account includes voices from various parts of the organisation and from different professional backgrounds, we focus particularly on those institutional contexts where commitments to this conservationist ethos are most prevalent, specifically architects and stonemasons working within the Conservation Directorate, those involved in the management of Properties in Care (PiCs) and members of the regional Heritage Management Teams. Literatures on repair, maintenance and care (e.g. Graham and Thrift 2007; Martinez and Laviolette 2019; Mattern 2018; Spelman 2002; Tronto 1993) have DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-4

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sought to surface the hidden work (Star and Strauss 1999) involved in commitments to keep things in some sense “as they are”. These often involve a normative ethical framing that recovers and celebrates this concealed labour. In an early, influential paper, Stephen Graham and Nigel Thrift propose that: These processes [of repair] can be likened to the social equivalent of the humble earthworm in their remorseless and necessary character – and in the way in which they have been neglected by nearly all commentators as somehow beneath their notice. Our intention is to bring these processes out into the light and to make them into the object of the systematic and sustained attention that they surely deserve to be, since they are the main means by which the constant decay of the world is held off. (2007: 1) In much of the subsequent literature inspired by this account, repair becomes a lens to interrogate the hubris of capitalist narratives of order and coherence, exposing the limits to these self-representations and celebrating social practices animated by other logics. Inspired by this work in its attention to the hidden and humble work of repair, our account develops this in a more ethically agnostic direction, foregrounding the moral sensibilities that underpin understandings of the professional qualities required for conservation work, along with the dilemmas that arise in the course of pursuing these. Thus, our account links work on repair with anthropological discussions of virtue ethics (particularly, Laidlaw 2014; Lambek 2015), drawing inspiration from recent extensions of these approaches to institutional contexts (Bear and Mathur 2015). From this perspective, we trace the ethical virtues through which conservation professionals assess their own and others’ actions and surface the dilemmas that emerge at the intersection of conflicting ideals. Specifically, we focus on forms of professional virtue associated with the work of maintaining things as a form of “conservation”. Extending perspectives from the previous chapter, we highlight how institutional ideologies and ethical sensibilities have their counterpart in personal virtues, focusing on the interconnected ideals of humbleness, humility, patience and pragmatism. Recent revisionist framings of repair have often theorised this as a creative act. By contrast, we foreground the conservationist logic that informs heritage professionals’ own understandings of this work as deferential to “the preexistent” (Spelman 2002: 126), a normative framing that celebrates the professional virtues of humbleness and humility as distinct from (and opposed to) the traits of novelty, innovation and creativity.

Humility Graham, a district architect, worked in a commercial practice before he started his job at HS. During an interview, TY asks him how his current role differs from this earlier work. He reflects:

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Humility. I think there needs to be a bit of humility. I’ve designed modern buildings, hotels and filling stations and things like that, commercial buildings over time, private houses, etcetera, but yes [conservation] it’s a different mindset. Later he elaborates: Humility matters. It’s quite important that you actually try and just ease back, because if you are quite an egotistical person, then that can cloud your decisions sometimes because you try to shout out what in fact you think […] Try[ing] to preserve the authenticity of the buildings, you’ll cloud that by actually…trying to say, ‘me’, here’s my mark on the building. In order to allow the building to “remain itself ”, it is necessary to curtail the professional expectation of mainstream commercial architecture: to “make a mark” or impose a creative vision. Chris, another district architect, likewise characterises a conservation approach, as a “respect” for historic buildings and monuments. Like many of the architects in the Conservation Directorate, he seems to embody this orientation not only in what he says but in how he says it. He talks slowly, often pausing, as if to assess the merits of what he has just said. Answers are careful, considered, thoughtful. In his mid-30s, he dresses in a smart but understated way, often in brown corduroy trousers, brogues, checked shirt and woollen jumper. His humour is dry and self-deprecating. Everything about his demeanour seems intended to deflect attention away from himself. We ask about his personal motivations and the satisfaction of the job: I don’t see it as making my mark, but I would hope that in maintaining the monument, in conserving the monument, our successors would view the work that we had done and treat it sympathetically, they wouldn’t be dismissive of it and say well it’s time for a change. Part of it is about how you want the monument to read. You don’t want there to be a mishmash of different interventions all vying for attention. Equally, you could argue, well, the intervention should be readable, that can add to the interest. But I feel that should be a low-key thing, you know. If we have the same handrail from our different interventions under Ministry of Works used throughout the site, then it becomes something that’s not a distraction. In Charles Peers’ terms, the professional qualities of muteness and modesty, amount to a professional commitment to defer to the material remains of the past. Satisfaction lies in the idea of keeping these “as they are”, though professionally this is not straightforwardly a case of “doing nothing”. Conservation requires sensitivity to what remains, an understanding of why this is important, a commitment to act with this in mind. Chris makes explicit the tension between

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different versions of humility: while interventions should be “readable” as distinct from the “original”, they should also be “deferential” to what already exists. Site furniture such as handrails and signs exemplify this tension between a desire for interventions to be a part of an existing context (“sensitive” and “sympathetic”) and for these to be apart from this (“readable” as later additions). Shared understandings of the importance of humility are located through different forms of professional practice. Masons at HS echo architects and other building professionals in a common understanding of the need for deference to historic sites. Their deference to existing buildings relates to their deference to the craft traditions that they practise. Describing their work as part of a “living tradition”, masons stress the continuity of practice over continuity of material fabric. This is frequently associated with a more interventionist interpretation of the ideal of “minimum intervention”. Echoing broader understandings of the opposition between art and craft, masons at Glasgow Cathedral are ambivalent to notions of creative individuality, stressing the discipline and patience required to actualise a tradition. Their actions bear the traces of past masons and are deferential to these. Much of the process of apprenticeship is oriented towards instilling these qualities of humbleness and humility. Experienced masons deride apprentices for misplaced confidence in their own abilities. In relation to stonemasons in Greece, Michael Herzfeld suggests, “Apprentices are not engaged in a self-defeating exercise in failed learning but instead are constantly balancing between norms and practices in the production of, at one and the same time, material objects and social selves” (2004: 53). Apprenticeship is a process of literally inhabiting tradition and making it a “thing lived” (2004: 53). Similarly, in HS, the production of material objects and social selves are inextricably connected, through the process of learning to inhabit “tradition”. Instilling a sense of the apprentice’s ignorance is regarded as an important prerequisite to learning. John is one of the most experienced masons on site and derives satisfaction from his role as an unofficial mentor to the apprentice. Like many of the masons, he grew up locally in a working-class area of Glasgow and speaks with a strong Glaswegian accent that reflects an upbringing and identity of which he is explicitly proud. Asked about his role, he reflects on a common problem that apprentices face: “They know it all. You’re reminding them every day that he doesn’t at all”. Later he elaborates: When you’re that age, you’re just dumb. You’re just dumb! Show me an eighteen year-old that isn’t, you know what I mean, you’re just dumb. [The apprentice] is already mouthy, you see that yourself. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know anything about this, he only knows what we’re telling him. He and the other masons often express avuncular care for the apprentice, explaining that joking and “slanging” (banter) fulfils a serious role and comes from a fundamental position of support:

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He’s got to be kept where he is, you know. I mean, we look after him, don’t get me wrong, [we] wouldn’t let anything happen to him or anything like that. But at the same time he’s at the bottom and he’s got to prove himself. [He] can’t be just a wee [small] likeable guy and funny, you know what I mean, and not be very good at his work. Instilling humility requires that praise be kept to the bare minimum. John explains: Never ever tell him he’s good, you know what I mean, never, ever, ever, he could always be better. It does teach you when you’re eighteen and you think [you know it all]. So you gang up on him and he quickly realises, you know, these guys might be older than me and [they’re] not quite trendy, but no in two seconds [we] could just go like that and just cut him down. Humbleness is taught in various ways. Routine banter and joking are common amongst all masons. Seen to keep people “honest”, they are a corrective to selfimportance, self-aggrandisement and the cardinal sin of “taking yourself too seriously”. While this can be related to a broader working-class celebration of the virtues of humbleness and humility particularly pronounced in Glasgow, it takes a particular inflection in relation to these craft ideals. Banter is directed with force at “cutting down” the neophyte. Apprentices are also sent on fool’s errands, for example being sent to buy “tartan paint” or a “long weight” (long wait); tasks that are not only impossible but humorously highlight how little they know. As with the trainee Mongolian Buddhist monks described by Jon Mair (2015), ignorance is in this sense a positive virtue that has been actively instilled. In the quote that opens this chapter, Peers refers to the civil service as a “great, anonymous society”. Conservationist ideals of modesty intersect with this Civil Service ideal of individual subservience to institutional procedure. During an interview, Brian, a heritage manager, acknowledges his own “personal” interest in buildings, but highlights the need for detachment in his work: There is a conservation value in itself in doing something consistently and impartially because there’s that kind of idea that you need a system that is trusted and is considered to be a good system for decision making about the historic environment. Commitment to bureaucratic objectivity requires a kind of self-control, making personal motives and interests defer to the broader aims of the institution (see DuGay 2000). Robert Dingwall argues that romantic fictions of personal fulfilment, creativity and growth have tended in recent years to eclipse the less celebrated virtues of self-discipline, more readily associated with bureaucratic conduct: “In our day we have difficulties understanding the virtues of obedience” (2008: 124).

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Correspondingly, he argues: “Bureaucracy is viewed as pathological in the light of the romantic creation myths of the professions. It epitomises the Weberian vision of the ‘iron cage’ of capitalism, occupied only by those who have lost their souls” (2008: 124). Elements of these narratives are reflected in institutional discourses in the Civil Service (DuGay 2000), specifically at HS (see Chapter 1). However, the preceding discussion illustrates the continued existence of a more positive set of orientations to a duty of care of an unfashionable “impersonal” kind. At HS, the ideal of humility is professionally valued in a range of ways as we have shown. Most basically the professional commitment to protect the remains of the past, is associated with subservience to them. Threaded through these narratives are two orientations that are linked but distinct: humility can take the form of an active separation of present actions and ideas from the past, a withdrawal or withholding of the self that enables the historic environment to remain “as it is”. Alternatively, it can be seen as an alignment of present actions or identities with the past, as in the idea of masonry as a “living tradition”. Both are active forms of passivity, the imperative to defer to an existing process or set of circumstances. Mark Button (2005) suggests that a widespread late-modern ambivalence to the ideal of humility relates to a perceived antipathy to the liberal virtues of selfexpression and creativity. In his own normative attempt to recover the ideal, he highlights the importance of humility as “an active civic virtue and political ethos geared toward facilitating attentiveness, listening, and mutual understanding among and between attentive others” (2005: 849). It is in this similar spirit that HS employees celebrate humility as an “an ethically productive sense of incompleteness” (2005: 851). As subsequent sections demonstrate, this orientation is also linked to ideas about the virtues of “patience” and “pragmatism” in conservation practice.

Patience Joe, a stonemason, is known in the yard as a man of few words. Now middleaged, he began his career in commercial masonry before moving to HS. He explains the importance of a patient approach: When you’re at the college, there’s maybe a class of fifteen, twenty, there is maybe only two or three who will stick at it. There’s guys I was at college with who as soon as they finished their time [apprenticeship] they’ve went and done other things. You really need the patience too, as well as being skilful you really need to appreciate, that this is going to be here [in the Cathedral] for six, seven, eight hundred years, and basically you want to make sure it’s right. The importance of patience is in some respects specific to the work of masonry: slow, time-consuming and sometimes repetitive. Many masons connect this to

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the nature of the material itself: stone is hard and unyielding, but also fragile and delicate. As Joe later elaborates, the need for patience also relates to the conservation context in which they practice. Historically significant buildings need quality work commensurate with their importance: In here, Historic Scotland, it isn’t based on profit making. Outside [in the commercial construction industry] time is money, you know what I mean, the process is a lot quicker, everything is, grinders, power tools, what have you. Here we have big slabs, outside everything will come bang on for you just to apply your templates to cut, …so they try and get everything speeded up for you. That’s cost again so everything is down to money and the same with the guys, the masons working they want to get the job done as fast as they can so they can earn more. Here, Historic Scotland, as long as you take your time and get it done right, even if it means you doing it all by hand, they’re happy with that. Another of the masons echoes these ideas, connecting the slow pace of work to the prioritisation of quality over quantity or speed of outcome: Because of the nature of the building you really need to be more thoughtful because you’ve got the time, you’re allowed the time in here to do that, so you need to use it, use that time to be more concentrated. Working slowly is seen as a virtue to the degree it enables sensitivity to context; a job done to the high standards required of a nationally significant monument. Mikko Jalas characterises the work of wooden boat builders and restorers as involving “the self-artistry of slowness” (2006: 346), highlighting how the measured pace of work heightens sensory and aesthetic appreciation. Likewise, masons connect the slow pace of their work to the materials they work with, and foreground how these are differently encountered when engaged through an orientation of patience. The virtues of patience are invoked in other parts of the organisation. One of the district architects explains how his current role differs from his previous job as a commercial architect: It is a much slower and more deliberate process and I think one of the things that it is a danger, if economics come into it, then there is a tendency to rush decisions as well. I think sometimes your first thought’s maybe wrong, and you really need to deliberate over it a little bit longer. In practice, HS has finite funds that necessarily impose limits on working routines, just as recent managerial discourses allied to broader conditions of economic austerity have tended to place greater emphasis on speed and efficiency (see Chapter 1). Even so, widespread ambivalence to commercialisation, reflects the

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broadly held perception that carefulness and sensitivity are undermined where tasks are dictated by time and money. Patience relates to the perceived value of sensitivity to the existing context, explains Graham, another district architect, during a tour of Glasgow Cathedral. He is responsible for overseeing ongoing renovation work being undertaken by the masons: “some of the work is glacially slow and that’s not because the squad are taking their time on it [i.e. too much time]”. Rather, he highlights the temporality that the building imposes on their work: What looks to you from here as a symmetrical, ordered window, when you actually get up there… in fact, you can see that one, look [he points high above], the centre is way off, right. […] So the guys have had to do an awful lot of onsite carving. Later in our tour of the building, he further explains the difficulties of this approach: I think some of the public thought that we were on the east elevation for [too] long and we were doing absolutely nothing. Because it’s very difficult to explain to people, if you take a sensitive approach it takes longer. And there were a number of times we took stones back out and thought, no, this is not working, they had to be re-carved, because it was important to try and marry it in with the… often quite contorted medieval work. Graham highlights how the pace of work is imposed by the building itself. Sensitivity, here, is the requirement that interventions take due consideration of the significance of existing contexts and constraints. Michael Taussig has written that “to Go Slow is to be mimetically sunk into the material at hand” (2015: 145). Working for a government organisation with finite funds and resources, and externally specified objectives and policies, employees at HS do not have the luxury of entirely embracing this “Go Slow” approach. Even so, HS professionals elucidate the virtues of patience in terms that echo Taussig’s, celebrating slowness as a form of sensitivity: work that takes its cue from these historic contexts yields in Taussig’s terms “to the very life of the object” (2015: 145). At HS, patience can be seen in this light as the ethical virtue of yielding to the life of historic contexts. As a quality of institutional practices, patience can involve overcoming the frustrations associated with working slowly, sticking to the task though the outcome is unclear or seems frustratingly distant. Patience is also the personal characteristic required to do what is necessary, even when this is difficult, whether because it is complex, or boringly repetitive. Above all, it is the calibration of work according to what is required in the interests of the buildings, artefacts and monuments they conserve, even if this is not easy or rewarding. These commitments are latent in the privileging of long-term over short-term or narrow interests.

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Shared ideals of patience intersect with professionally-specific ways of understanding the relationship between time and task. Responsible for overseeing budgets architects in the Conservation Directorate, are more pressingly aware of the temporal constraints imposed by limited funds. Time-pressures are differently exerted and experienced by heritage managers, whose role entails the timely response to public requests, as contrasted with masons or painting conservators, where there is often greater flexibility to adapt to the contingencies of context. Those working closely with the PiCs are able to develop longer-term understandings of the monuments they work with and to plan future work on a longer temporal horizon. Moreover, in the face of reforms described in Chapter 1, the ability to uphold these professional commitments to slow and patient work was often seen as threatened by increasing workloads and the faster pace of institutional change.

Pragmatism “All conservation is about compromise”, Graham tells us. Perhaps his jocular demeanour is a way of dealing with the tensions and compromises involved. As a district architect aiming to do what is best for the building, these compromises emerge in various ways, including: in balancing the views of the different experts involved; as trade-offs between the destruction of original fabric inherent in short-term repairs as against the longer-term prevention of further damage. These compromises are specific to this role, characterised by another district architect as “the equivalent of a medical general practitioner”. This involves, he later explains, “knowing a little about a lot”. At the intersection of multiple perspectives and interests, “pragmatism” is seen as the virtue of compromise, as distinct from dogmatic unilateralism: the recognition that time and patience may be needed to talk things through, negotiate, engage in dialogue to work out where consensus lies, even if not easily or unanimously settled on (themes returned to in Chapter 3). As a form of deference to other people, and as a commitment to institutional process over and above individual perspectives, the ethical virtues of pragmatism resonate with the ideals of humility and modesty described in previous sections. This understanding of pragmatism as the importance of compromise between professional perspectives relates to a second: that conservation principles be interpreted in contextually specific ways. Graham explains: “we all have postgraduate degrees or whatever in conservation… but at the end of the day it comes down to pragmatic decisions on site”. Graham parodies the changing fashions in conservation philosophy with evident, if humorously expressed, disdain: The conservation conference circuit, there’s a wee [small] touch of the ‘religious paper by the eminent scientist of blah, blah, blah’, comes into it and I think sometimes the message gets skewed. So [conservation theory] has its place but it needs a wee touch of pulling back to the pragmatism and the empirical knowledge of generations and giving that its importance.

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He is sceptical of the pronouncements of academics and scientists, specifically of their tendency to advocate approaches that are unhelpfully abstract and prone to rapid changes of “fashion”. By contrast, his characterisation of the pragmatism of fellow conservation professionals involves a way of knowing derived from, and applied through, specific engagements with monuments – “making things work” on the basis of what has worked in the past for particular cases and contexts. Grant, a heritage manager, similarly describes the virtue of ways of working that allow for “practical” interpretation. He praises SHEP (the document setting out the Scottish ministers’ policies) as a “workable document”, noting how the lack of specificity allows latitude in the way the core principle of “minimum intervention” is applied: So, depending on the nature of the problem the word ‘normally’ may be extraneous to the actual solution required. That’s what I love, because there’s so much room in there to come up with a practical solution which still maintains cultural significance to an overriding degree. In Grant’s view, a lack of “subtlety” in the framing of the policy, enables a practical subtlety in how the spirit of the principle is interpreted and applied. HS heritage professionals also value pragmatism in a third, linked sense, highlighting the need to balance conservation ideals in relation to other interests and considerations. Bruce, a regional architect, describes the limitations of a strict interpretation of “minimal intervention” in relation to buildings: Built monument conservation has to be a little more pragmatic… I really don’t believe that we can be quite as precious about them [conservation principles] and about built monuments exposed to the climate, particularly the Scottish climate, as perhaps the purest reading of the international charters would suggest. In his view, short-term destruction of original fabric may be warranted if it curtails longer-term damage through the kind of decay that is exacerbated by the Scottish weather. A district architect similarly describes the need for pragmatic interpretations of “conserve as found” to be tempered in practice: “pragmatism sometimes dictates that you can’t wholly adhere to that. Sometimes you made a bigger intervention for the greater good”. A less “purist” interpretation of conservation principles may result in a better conservation outcome, if it reduces long-term structural damage. In these three linked senses, pragmatism is, paradoxically, a kind of ideal, defined in opposition to “ideology” (compare Heywood forthcoming). It is also a kind of identity. Miscellaneous architectural artefacts are ranged around the offices of district architects. Alison, for example, has various bits of stones, a piece that has fallen off a building, alongside samples that might be used as

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replacements. In another room, there is a sample of thatch roofing. While there for specific reasons, these items implicitly convey a broader professional identity, indexing the “practical” work they perform. Hard hats and flash jackets hung up on pegs and over chairs are there for functional reasons but also act as silent signifiers of practicality. Relative differences in the degrees and kinds of pragmatism involved in different professional roles are regularly expressed through joking and banter. On one site meeting, the heritage manager is forced to leave early to attend to commitments elsewhere. As he leaves, the district architect says to the Monument Conservation Unit manager in a stage whisper, intended to be clearly audible: “Right, we can get on with the real work now!”. Elsewhere we hear those in one of the Monument Conservation Units making similar jokes after district architects have left, parodying their perceived lack of understanding of the “practical” maintenance issues they deal with at these sites. Appeals to pragmatism invoke a particular kind of authority and emerge recursively across a range of professional contexts and institutional levels. Donald Schon proposes that academic institutions are for the most part committed to “a view of knowledge that fosters selective inattention to practical competence and professional artistry” (2013 [1983]: 11). His own accounts of professional practitioners highlight the nature of this competence through what he describes as “the art of the specific case”. When those at HS highlight the importance of pragmatism, it is a similar kind of knowing that they seek to highlight. Insofar as conservation objects are always specific, an assumption inherent in their understanding of conservation as the preservation of what is unique, their work is never simply a matter of “application”. Existing knowledge and principles are always shaped in relation to circumstances through practices of negotiation, interpretation and compromise. Discourses of pragmatism, as distinct from unthinking “dogmatism”, celebrate the difficulty and importance of knowing what the right course of action is, where no straightforwardly procedural or principled answer can be given de facto. In terms that resonate with recent discussions of virtue ethics (Laidlaw 2014; Lambek 2015), they acknowledge that, if conservation is about compromise, there are better and worse ways of reaching this and foreground a set of professional competencies required to do so. Linked to the ideals of humility discussed above, the professional virtues of “pragmatism” are related to a productive sense of moral incompletion, associated with attentiveness to others, willingness to compromise, acknowledgement of the need to listen and be led in the light of knowledge or perspectives offered by others. Most profoundly these various forms of attentiveness are anchored by a commitment to listen and be led by the particular material contexts of the things they seek to conserve (Figure 2.1). In the next section, we explore how the conservation virtues of humility, patience and pragmatism open out onto a range of more specific ethical questions and dilemmas.

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FIGURE 2.1 

Annual Monument Audit site meeting to inspect an HS Property in Care.

(T.Yarrow).

Restore or preserve? A poster on the door of one of the regional Heritage Management Teams highlights a key contradiction in conservation thinking. On the left, an image of John Ruskin, nineteenth-century conservation campaigner and writer, whose work continues to be acknowledged as a key point of reference for contemporary conservation practice. The accompanying quote reads: “Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture”. Juxtaposed with this, an image of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc nineteenth-century French architect, is accompanied by his assertion: “To restore a building is not to repair it, to preserve it, or rebuild it, but to bring it back to a state of completion such as may never have existed at any given moment”. Ideas of humility, patience and pragmatism, relate to the ethical virtue of caring for the past, which frames a series of questions and ethical dilemmas about how best to do this. Is it possible to recover what has been lost? Should conservation privilege the retention of fabric or appearance? To what extent is intervention necessary or problematic in the face of material decay? Heritage professionals encounter and resolve these questions in a range of contexts, where ethical questions emerge in two broad forms of uncertainty and irresolution: between abstractly clear policies and the specific contexts of conservation objects;

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and in the internal contradictions that are inherent to these policies (for instance, the concept of “minimal intervention”). These dilemmas are situated and elaborated in relation to different forms of expertise and disciplinary training, leading to distinct and sometimes contested understandings of what course of action is ethically sound. In the UK, Ruskin’s approach remains in ascendency. HS employees continue to refer to him along with his contemporary and collaborator, William Morris, as the inspiration and origin of the philosophy of “minimal intervention”: if the authenticity of conservation objects is an amalgamation of the unrepeatable original creation and the “golden stain of time” (Ruskin 1880 [1849]: 10), restoration is a logical impossibility, tantamount to destruction. Even so, Viollet-leDuc embodies an orientation that retains some influence: if the importance of a building inheres in the creative vision of an architect or creator, rather than in its material fabric, it does not necessarily follow that authenticity is best conserved by minimising intervention. The poster highlights how conservation thinking often engenders internally contradictory approaches that make it difficult to know what a “good” or “right” course of action should be. The dilemma, as Alois Riegl (1996 [1902]) pinpointed in his seminal paper, The Modern Cult of Monuments, is that architectural form is lost through material degradation brought about by the passage of time, whilst conservation’s own intervention potentially threatens authenticity, destroying original material or removing signs of decay, valued for their evocation of age or “pastness” (Holtorf 2017; also Lowenthal 1985). Since the ideal of “minimal intervention” is an ambiguous and self-contradictory one, it is potentially consistent with different interpretations of the degree and kind of appropriate intervention. This broad tension is differently located in relation to distinct professional identities. (In Chapters 7 and 8, we return to the specific ways in which these differences are interpreted in relation to particular cases.) When we speak to them in 2010, Catherine and Susan are Heads, respectively, of Understanding and Access team and the Conservation Directorate. They work closely together and share a good rapport. During a joint interview, they often interject to finish one another’s sentences. Even so, they acknowledge how the concept of “minimal intervention” engenders a tension that emerges at various institutional scales, in its most general form as the relationship between the teams they respectively lead. Susan tells us, “it’s always a balancing act between authenticity and long-term survival”. Authenticity requires that things are left unaltered, whilst preservation dictates that changes must be made. Hence, Catherine tells us, “it’s the job of Susan’s team to say, ‘you could do X’, and the job of my team to say ‘you can’t possibly do that!’”. Both laugh at the joke but acknowledge the serious point it highlights: while they share a concern with the longterm preservation of the historic environment, their specific role and remit can lead to different proximate interpretations of how this shared goal is to be met. Being concerned with the routine upkeep and maintenance of monuments, the Conservation Directorate (as they were then named in 2010) have a remit for

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practical upkeep and maintenance, that is distinct from the more protectionist approach of those working in the Access and Understanding Team who advise on consent for work carried out on PiCs. Distinct conservationist approaches are acknowledged in stereotypes and parodies. On one occasion, a district architect points to some peeling paint on the door of a castle, joking that “a bit of Nitro Morse would quickly fix that!”. His reference to a proprietary paint stripper, evidently inappropriate to the context, is a self-parody of the “practical” approach of his team, which draws, in turn, the mock outrage of his colleague. Both are in on the joke, a performance of caricatures that highlights a difference of orientation that is central to the many negotiations that take place between them. District Architects hold the budgets for the upkeep of PiCs, a role that gives them a degree of power but also a particular pressure. Articulating a more general frustration, one of them complains to us about Heritage Management’s decision to reject her proposal for a scheme to address extensive stone decay at a site she oversees. She resents how an objection to the degree of proposed intervention, overlooks the long-term costs and practical problems that will be created by a more limited intervention. By contrast, characterisations of the Conservation Directorate from within Heritage Management sometimes focus on a lack of precision and the problems that result from a more interventionist approach. On one site visit, a Heritage Manager jokingly refers to the district architect’s specification of “between five and seven wall ties”, a parody of imprecision as a lack of care. Caught up in a range of everyday interactions is a more general tension: between a commitment to preserve things through practical interventions that keep them “in good order”; and a commitment to preserve things through not intervening, even to the extent this might result in some decay. This organisationally horizontal relationship between the more “minimal” orientation of some Directorates in HS and the more “interventionist” orientation of others, also occurs in more vertical relationships within these. Within the Conservation Directorate, for instance, the district architects often relate their role as “holding back” the masons in the Monument Conservation Units (MCUs), outlining how the “practical” desire to keep the monuments in good repair can result in levels of intervention at odds with the “philosophical” commitment to minimise intervention. Differences of organisational role and remit intersect with differences of emphasis relating to disciplinary expertise and training. HS employees come from a range of backgrounds including people with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in archaeology, architecture, conservation science, history and history of art, as well as in more vocationally oriented courses, including painting and stone conservation. Many in the MCUs have been through apprenticeships in relevant construction-related trades. Each of these forms of education and training are also actively cultivated through inculcation into specific roles when people join HS. Disciplinary dispositions are thus aligned with professional roles in complex ways, ultimately engendering distinctive ways of seeing, “skilled

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visions” (after Grasseni 2004, 2007a), which we explore through specific material contexts in Chapters 7 and 8. These also produce distinct if overlapping conceptions of what the object of conservation is and how it matters. Amongst these many differences, the distinction between “architectural” and “archaeological” approaches is particularly significant, invoked within HS to foreground a series of contrasts and differences of professional orientation. These contrasts are significant not only because a relatively large number of employees are drawn from these backgrounds, but also because these disciplines have been particularly central to the development of policy, legislation and institutional structures in HS as in the conservation sector more generally. In crude terms a broadly “archaeological” approach was central to the initial development of state involvement in heritage protection in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as part of the then Office of Works (Emerick 2014). This was reflected and manifested through the appointment of Pitt Rivers, an archaeologist, as the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments. Simon Thurley notes that from the start he “saw the essential task as that of making a national record of prehistoric remains” (2013: 46). Conceiving monuments first and foremost as evidence, Pitt Rivers developed “scheduling” as a form of designation and protection appropriate to these aims. From the turn of the century onwards, and most decisively under the guidance of Charles Peers, protection was extended to later structures, including buildings in use. An architect by training, Peers insisted on a separate cadre of architects and surveyors to work on historic structures (Thurley 2013: 68). By the start of the twenty-first century, statutory work relating to designation and regulation of listed buildings and scheduled monuments involved people with backgrounds in architectural history and archaeology, respectively. Thus, an “architectural” approach (usually, people with architectural history training) became associated with listing and an “archaeological” approach with scheduling. Within HS, these differences were further entrenched through their association with two distinct Inspectorates. These were merged in 2008, as part of the institutional restructurings discussed in Chapter 1, with the aim of breaking the connection between disciplinary orientation and statutory designation. Nevertheless, in practice, people with archaeological training retained a leading role in determining consent for scheduled monuments, while consent for listed buildings was often overseen by architecturally trained colleagues. The historical complexities of the relationships between archaeological and architectural influences on conservation have been explored by Keith Emerick (2014) in the UK context. Here we are concerned with the ethical tensions that arise when the principle of “minimum intervention” intersects with these disciplinary approaches. People with archaeological, architectural and architectural history training work closely together, sometimes in the same teams and stress their commitments to shared conservation goals and principles. The need to strike an appropriate balance between the “archaeological” preservation of material fabric as evidence or “record”, and “architectural” ideas of “aesthetic integrity”

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Tiles are used to differentiate new from old in an early twentieth-century SPAB-inspired “honest repair” (S. Jones). FIGURE 2.2 

and “character” is also widely acknowledged. Even so, tensions can arise with respect to specific cases, exposing and re-situating longer-standing conflicts. From an explicitly “architectural” perspective, Bruce mobilises this distinction in reference to a tradition of “self-documenting” repairs – techniques such as date marks, “inching back” of new work from original surfaces, and insertion of distinctive materials used to distinguish new interventions from the “original” (Figure 2.2). First promoted in the nineteenth century by the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), Bruce associates these self-documenting techniques with an “archaeological mindset”, relating to concerns to preserve original fabric as “evidence”. He explains his reservations: I think in terms of the monument as a piece of architectural sculpture or composition or just something which is sitting romantically in the landscape, it’s not actually helping. […] There’s been a lot of that carried out

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at one of our monuments called Threave Castle, to me it’s just an absolute boorach [mess], because the masonry, some of it’s pushed back, some of it’s not, some of the pointing’s pushed back, some of it’s not. And […] the first time you walk into it, you start to think, well, what does that mean? It’s not telling you anything about that aspect of the building, it’s just telling you about the areas where somebody has worked upon the building. I think there’s a fundamental point, the archaeologists and architects debate going on there. His views echo those of other architecturally trained colleagues, who often express reservations about the use of self-documenting repairs, in terms of a loss of “visual harmony”, “coherence” and “architectural integrity”. In practice, the “archaeological” and the “architectural” serve as linked tropes, which are mobilised to draw contextual distinctions in negotiating changes to fabric and form. James, an archaeologist by training and senior heritage manager, works alongside other heritage managers with architectural history training. Drawing out the disciplinary and legislative linkages he explains that: The main focus of the listings process is on the architectural heritage and most of the people employed [in those roles] all came through architectural history so there was that architectural approach. What was important was what somebody understood the architectural merit of the [listed] building to be and what the [original] architects had envisaged. So later reworkings which an archaeologist might find interesting tend not to be thought about as being of any relevance…On the [scheduled] ancient monument side it would be a lot more focused on protecting the fabric and seeing the fabric as part of what you’d like to preserve, whereas on the building side, they tend to be more or less trying to retain the overall impression and some of the finer details, rather than the solid fabric. His account echoes Bruce’s (above), in highlighting a difference of emphasis on fabric and architectural form, respectively. Whereas Bruce points to the loss of visual unity and architectural integrity that can result from self-documenting approaches or an excessive concern with material authenticity, James foregrounds how the architectural view latent in listing legislation leads to a linked but inverse elision. He explains how the importance of a building or monument as an evidential palimpsest, embodying later re-uses and alterations, may be equally or more significant than visual appearance or architectural provenance: Castles is probably the one that [most] exposes the differences between the two approaches. There’s a whole suite of castles that are scheduled monuments, scheduled as being nationally important, which […] don’t have architectural features or an architectural name associated with them. And when it comes to works to them, I think on the ancient monument side [it’s] a lot more focused on protecting the fabric and seeing the fabric as part

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of what you’d like to preserve, whereas on the building side, they tend to be more or less trying to retain the impression and some of the finer details of the castle rather than the solid fabric. Both sides will, if you press, have horror stories, of where the other side managed to get the balance wrong, because both sides are trying to strike a balance, but it’s where the balance can be struck. The designations of listing and scheduling broadly relate to buildings in use and uninhabited, often ruinous, structures, respectively.1 In practice, not all those responsible for making and enforcing listing designations have an architectural history or art history training, just as not all those responsible for scheduled monuments are archaeologists by training. Moreover, it is important to stress how the above characterisations are generalisations about tendencies, relating to elements and criteria that all are trying to balance. Even so, the conflation of scheduling with archaeology and listing with architecture expresses both a general perception of how these work, and an historical awareness of how these designations came about. HS employees shared understandings of the moral virtue of deference to the past are elaborated in distinct and sometimes contradictory directions. If they agree about the need for humility to the past, they nevertheless debate the practical implications of this overarching ethical commitment. Is this best expressed through intervening or not? Should they try to recapture what something once was, or let it be what it has become? We have seen how the related ideals of humility and respect anchor a range of tensions, conflicts and disagreements concerning the issues of how to intervene and how much. Since their own practices are oriented by this deferential sensibility, the questions and answers are always specific. General tensions between archaeological and architectural approaches, between the importance of form and fabric, and between the desire to intervene or let go, are threaded through a myriad of specific conversations and negotiations, framing the issues without determining the outcomes.

Conclusion: working from the past What kind of person is a conservation professional? In this chapter we have explored how accounts of those at HS help to provide an answer, focusing on the moral virtues that are central to these professional narratives and the kinds of selves these describe, evaluate and construct. These include linked ideas relating to the importance of humility, patience and sensitivity to context, of the need for “pragmatism” and of acting in ways that minimise the impacts of the intervention. We have seen how the perceived conservation value of these ideas is complexly enmeshed in other institutional and professional virtues, including those relating to craft traditions and bureaucratic conduct. With respect to these widely shared conservation ideals, we have shown how differences of role, remit and training, are associated with differences of emphasis, sometimes to the point

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of disagreement. As an example of these differences, our account reveals how a central contrast between “archaeological” and “architectural” approaches is invoked to explain distinct orientations to conservation, particularly in relation to the relative importance of fabric and form and in different understandings of the degree and kind of acceptable change. Thus, the everyday ethics of conservation emerges along various planes, including: in efforts to apply abstractly clear principles, to complex conservation contexts; in the dilemmas that arise from differences and contradictions that are inherent to the policies and principles they seek to enact; in personally specific efforts to inhabit the idealised ethical selves of specific conservation professions; and in the ways these distinct professional differences open out onto different understandings of appropriate (in)action. The philosopher Elizabeth Spelman eloquently captures a dilemma that is axiomatic to the work of conservation: Repair, restore, rehabilitate, renovate, reconcile, redeem, heal, fix, and mend[…]These are distinctions that make a difference. [But] as crucial as such distinctions are, the family of repair activities shares the aim of maintaining some kind of continuity with the past in the face of breaks or ruptures to that continuity. They involve returning in some manner or other to an earlier state – to the bowl before it was broken, to the friendship before it began to buckle under the weight of suspicion, to the nation before it was torn by hostility and war[…]Even though taking superglue to the bowl repairs it without fully restoring it to its pre-shattered condition, both repairer and restorer want to pick up a thread with the past. (2002: 4–5) Later she elaborates on this underlying temporal logic: To repair is to acknowledge and respond to the fracturability of the world in which we live in a very particular way – not by simply throwing up our hands in despair, or otherwise accepting without question that there is no possibility of or point in trying to put the pieces back together, but by employing skills of mind, hand, and heart to recapture an earlier moment in the history of an object or a relationship in order to allow it to keep existing. (2002: 5–6) In this chapter, we have traced ethnographically the multiple ways in which an overarching “service to the past” fractures and congeals in the everyday work of conservation professionals. Figured as continuity with the past, conservationists highlight what they see in Spelman’s terms to be the labour of “picking up a thread with the past”. Through the narratives of conservation professionals, we have highlighted a set of professional ethical virtues, relating to forms of self that are subsidiary to

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the objects, artefacts and buildings that they seek to conserve. As described in these accounts, conservation is a matter of retaining what is valuable in these, of understanding these contexts and of acting “sensitively” with these in mind. Materially speaking this involves deference to things “as they are”. From a temporal perspective, it involves an effort to figure the present and future with respect to the past. In this regard, the past is understood to have an animating quality that conservation professionals respond to, channel, interpret and (in various ways) attune themselves with. Though this involves working practices acknowledged to be important, difficult and necessary, these are always in some sense subsidiary to the historic buildings, artefacts and monuments with which they work. Even as they are manifested in relation to distinct disciplinary dispositions, professional orientations and roles, humility, patience and pragmatism are all ways of celebrating a kind of self which is actively and thoughtfully passive.

Note 1 In practice the difference is often moot. For instance, Glasgow Cathedral has a listing relating to the above ground structure, and a scheduling relating to the below-ground archaeology.

3 ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE

At HS, there are a lot of meetings, a fact that is sometimes lamented as a symptom of unnecessary “bureaucracy”. Amongst the stonemasons we worked with, they jokingly talked of “meetings about meetings”, parodying the apparent selfproliferation of this institutional form. These understandings emerge alongside a more positive assessment of the central role that meetings play. James, a senior heritage manager involved in the routine casework relating to designated buildings and ancient monuments in South West Scotland, describes their importance in relation to the organisational aim of consistent and collective decision-making: When we speak, when I speak, [if ] I’m responding to people regarding a planning case, it’s not just me. It’s my face, my words, but it’s Historic Scotland that’s speaking […] So you’ve got however many people’s knowledge that you can tap into and discuss things with […] We’ve all got to deal with the same environment that we work with, so we’d all sit to discuss it. Is that a good approach? Is that a reasonable way of applying policy in these terms? Even amongst colleagues with similar training, different specialisms and personal perspectives lead to divergent assessments. Another heritage manager jokes that, “In a meeting of ten people, there will be eleven opinions on any given issue!”. In their various forms, meetings are ways of reconciling differences as specific agreements, even where these relate to profound differences of approach that do not ultimately and abstractly resolve. At the intersection between a regulatory ideal of consistency, and one that celebrates collaboration across disciplinary orientations and roles, meetings emerge as key institutional contexts in which epistemic differences are expressed, negotiated and aligned. The subsequent DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-5

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ethnographic sections of this chapter demonstrate how meetings accomplish this in a range of ways. The chapter is inspired by earlier anthropological accounts of meetings. In particular, Helen Schwartzman’s (1989) work was pioneering, shifting attention beyond the substantive “content” of meetings (the views expressed within these) to highlight the social practices and quotidian institutional forms through which these operate. While this approach focuses attention on meetings as spaces for the coordination and choreography of perspective, the conceptualisation of these as “communicative events” elides attention to their material and spatial dimensions. In line with broader shifts in the anthropology of organisations and bureaucracy (Bruun-Jensen and Winthereik 2013; Hull 2012a; Mol 2002; Yarrow 2011), recent accounts of meetings have helped to highlight these material and spatial aspects (Brown et al. 2017; Sandler and Thedvall 2016). However, despite this more recent analytic focus on material and non-human agency (particularly from Actor-Network Theory (ANT)-inspired scholars), there has been limited ethnographic attention to actors’ own understandings of the materiality of institutional knowledge. In this chapter, we foreground how the material remains of the past are attributed specific agency, animating the knowledge that is produced about them and guiding the decisions that are made with respect to them. This ethnographic focus leads us to explore heritage professionals’ own understandings of the central role of historic monuments as key actors in this organising process. In order to highlight the emergent qualities of these interactions, our account unfolds through three extended ethnographic vignettes, tracing what Gillian Evans terms the “moment by moment materialisation of the decision-making process” (2017: 127).

Site meeting Graham, a district architect, echoes others at HS when he stresses the importance of site meetings: No matter how much documentation you put in front of someone, it’s a bit like reading a book about Venice without actually experiencing the place… it’s a different thing. But when you’re all looking at the problem right then, you with me, that’s it. He stresses the “practical” nature of these interactions as key to the resolution that results: “we all have post graduate degrees…[but] at the end of the day it all comes down to pragmatic decisions on site”. From the perspective of those involved, the epistemic meeting of disciplinary and institutional differences emerges through a physical meeting with specific buildings and sites. As Graham makes explicit, perspectives are changed when experts are moved from office to site. The building is seen to have a kind of agency: it acts to extend and relate the perspectives

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that are brought to bear on it (issues explored in Chapters 7, 8 and 9, in relation to skilled practice, significance and materiality). Some of these dynamics are evident during a site visit to Dunkeld Cathedral, undertaken as part of the yearly Annual Monument Audit (AMA) to assess the condition of the Property in Care (PiC), and a chance to plan future conservation strategies and interventions. The cathedral, mostly Norman and Gothic, is set amongst trees, with manicured lawns sloping down to the nearby River Tay. It presents an image of the “romantic ruin” that appears timeless, but its materially and structurally precarious state raises a series of conservation issues that are a central focus of the meeting. The question of what to do is complex and unclear for two main reasons: because the conservation principles are abstract, they are potentially consistent with a range of possible actions; differences of role and training lead to different perspectives. As at other AMAs, the meeting is overseen by the district architect, the person with responsibility for planning and overseeing conservation work. Originally from the West of Scotland, Alison has a background in commercial architecture and characterises her own approach as that of a “pragmatist” (see Chapter 2 for an extended analysis of the ideal of pragmatism). Alison’s counterpart in the Heritage Management Team is William. An archaeologist by training, his role is to ensure that conservation interventions are consistent with the organisation’s regulations and approach, both through informal guidance and through overseeing a formal consent process. Also present at the meeting is Stuart, whose role as the regional head of the “works team” (the term he colloquially uses to refer to the MCU) is to oversee and direct the squads who undertake the practical work of conservation. Angela, the cultural resource expert from the Understanding and Access Team, has a degree in history and brings to the meeting a detailed knowledge of the cultural and historic significance of the site. Outside the frame of the meeting, many of these colleagues also consider one another as friends, but within it, their interactions are underpinned by their respective institutional roles (Reed 2017): each personifies an institutional approach and speaks on this basis. This embodiment of role is evident in a subtle change of voice that occurs in formal meeting contexts: “professional perspectives” not only engender their own specific vocabularies and phrases but are also marked by an evenly authoritative delivery that seems intended to elide the individual specificity of the speaker (compare Boyer 2005: 249; Yarrow 2019: 212–213). Dressed in hard hats and flash jackets, we climb to the top of the scaffolding. The meeting takes the form of a walking tour, following the sequence of illustrated issues laid out in the document produced by Alison. The point, as both Alison and William make explicit, is to establish “principles” and a “methodology” as the basis for an approach that will inform a later, formally documented application for the work to be undertaken. Alison has planned the meeting as a tour of the building, with particular elements selected to highlight broader issues and to agree on an approach that is acceptable to all. William explains the process she will need to follow and the forms of documentation required in order for his

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team to assess the intervention: “So you need an example photograph: what’s going to happen and why”. The first example relates to the wallhead, “rough racked” stone, where the existing asphalt covering is brittle and cracking. Alison outlines the problem of erosion where the covering has eroded back from the stones. Her preferred approach is a replacement of the original. William wonders whether it might be possible to use an alternative product that looks like lead, but which is cheaper and can be less damaging to the existing fabric. There is a discussion between Alison and William about the potential of using this. No consensus is reached beyond the conclusion that more research needs to be done. Alison notes this as a future “action” she will need to initiate. We walk along the scaffolding to the next example. Alison holds up her annotated diagram to the stone. Eyes move between the two. Stuart is brought into the discussion by Alison: “What do you think as a mason?”. Stuart feels the stone, knocks it and picks at some loose material: “I’d just leave that, that’s pretty sound”. Part of Alison’s role is to choreograph the perspectives of others, drawing out different views, and opinions, seeking to ascertain where these depart and where they coincide. Different perspectives are not just abstractly held but materially performed. The meeting constitutes a specific “ecology of attention” (Grasseni 2007a: 9): expert visions are mediated by the skilled enactment of material and technological contexts. Perspectives align and bifurcate through situated encounters with the building (as we discuss in detail in Chapter 7 in relation to one specific building, Glasgow Cathedral). Conversation emerges at the intersection of these perspectives, sometimes in consensus and agreement, sometimes in conflict. At times the conversation seems to move seamlessly as perspectives build to a consensus. At other times disagreements are evident in frankly articulated differences or silent stalemates. The choreography of the meeting is intended to ensure that even where perspectives diverge, they do so in relation to an object that is shared (Yarrow 2019). Experts congregate, eyes focused, drawn together by pointing hands, and by the graphical representations that Alison has made: diagrams, as stripped back versions of an otherwise unthinkably complex building, focus attention on “key points” and make the building legible as a series of “issues” (Figure 3.1). William, an archaeologist by training, makes explicit the bigger problems they are facing at the site: “Multi layers of conservation history stacked on top of each other – where do we start? 100 years from now its age is going to be circa 1920”. His role as heritage manager is to ensure the preservation of the monument by insisting that intervention is kept to a minimum. He is concerned that measures to stabilise and conserve the building could entail a loss of original fabric: “all the proper masonry will have gone”. Alison responds, conveying her sense that the difficulty of the situation should not prevent anything from happening: I think what we’re doing is maintenance in one big chunk that would have been done over the centuries. We shouldn’t use the problems as an excuse not to do anything. We need to do something. It’s just folly to walk away from it – more pieces are going to fall.

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FIGURE 3.1 

Diagram of planned interventions, Dunkeld Cathedral (T.Yarrow).

We walk to the next point, looking for the stonework depicted on Alison’s diagram. Alison remarks drily, “We’ll be replacing the rotten scaffold before we get to the stone”. She is joking though her point is serious: she is aware of the need for a careful and consensual approach, but also of the dangers and costs of delaying intervention. Later, she will explain these to TY in the car back to the office. Scaffolding has been up for a while, tying up scarce funds that could more productively be used for other projects. She acknowledges that the consent process is important, but is frustrated at the amount of time it takes. We stop and congregate, this time to consider an example of the issues relating to decaying window tracery. Most are in two parts, but one is in three: the question is whether this is “original” or “replacement”, and if the latter whether this later addition should be copied, or the detail inferred from earlier examples? There is also a question of how much should be replaced. Conservation guidelines dictate an approach of “minimum intervention”, but the term entails a contradiction that allows for different possible interpretations (a point developed in

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detail in Chapter 2). Should the original fabric be kept, even if this has decayed to the point where the original architectural form is lost? Where is the balance to be struck? William suggests that technical advice will be needed to ascertain how much is likely to go and how quickly. As is common in these meetings, uncertainties are factored out and carried forward as a series of “action points” oriented towards resolution. Aiming at agreement, irresolution and disagreement are displaced beyond the immediate confines of the space and time in which the meeting takes place. In a form familiar from other contexts of meeting (Brown et al. 2017; Yarrow 2019: 179–188), consensus is built through disaggregating those decisions where agreement exists from those where differences remain or further context is needed. The final point addressed at the meeting relates to the issue of “bossing”. Stuart, the works manager, explains that in places the stone has been hollowed out by water penetration, leaving the appearance of a sound ashlar stone, which is in reality structurally compromised. Alison describes the process she and Stuart have jointly been through, tapping the individual stones and listening to the sound as a measure of material integrity. They had tried a coin but found a bulldog clip to be the most successful, making a “good resounding noise”, indicative of hollowness and decay of fabric. William consents to the approach proposed by Alison, involving selective replacement via “indenting” of new stone where this is “bossed” or decayed – a common conservation approach that enables a structural repair while minimising loss of original fabric. The agreement is noted by Alison and the meeting concludes with a walk back to the cars. During site meetings, people engage on the basis of professional roles and forms of expertise, which though personally embodied are not, as participants see it, “personal”. As in the case of the third sector meetings described by Adam Reed (2017: 172), immaterial professional roles are embodied and made visible through the performances of individuals within the meeting context. These differences of expertise and role are often imagined as complementary elements as partial and distinct “perspectives” that add up to a totalising vision. However, they also engender tensions, expressed through joking and banter, and less frequently through active disagreement. Such banter enacts an ironic distance between the personal and professional dimensions of these relationships: professional disagreements frequently emerge alongside good working relationships (Yarrow 2011, 2019). Site meetings are the means by which these professional differences are expressed and resolved, with the aim of achieving institutional consistency: intervention must be consistent with the conservation principles of the agency while also responding to the context of the site. Most conservation interventions require the input of a range of experts, including archaeologists, architects, heritage scientists and craft practitioners. HS employees articulate a shared commitment to the importance of compromise between these. Susan, Head of Conservation, explains this idea during an interview, contrasting her previous work as a commercial architect with her current work in conservation:

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It’s trying to get everybody’s input across all of the areas and reach, compromise, […] consensus. Get everybody’s input and find the best balance between all of the different aspects. In the outside world what you might find is the contractors going, ‘I want to do it like that because it’s easy’, and the architect’s going, ‘Oh, well, this is the purist view, this is how I want it to do it’, and the client going, ‘Why, this way is cheaper’. And somewhere in the middle of that you end up with a dog’s dinner. Whereas in here [at HS], we’ve actually got the opportunity to sit and, you know, we’re here for the long term. Her account highlights the importance of an active process of aligning perspectives, as distinct from the “dog’s dinner” of the less reconciled differences she sometimes encountered in her former role. You’ve not got the ‘us’ and ‘them’ that you might have in the outside world in making decisions. All that gets put on one side because you’re talking about, ‘this is the monument and let’s all chip in and let’s all make sure we’re doing the right thing’ […] Judgement is very much to me a group activity. Everyone has a judgement, but all of those judgements have to come together, and it’s the balancing of those that gives us the right way forward. These forms of professional compromise invoke an ideal that resonates with Les Back’s (2007) conceptualisation of “the art of listening”: an active form of passivity characterised by careful attention to others’ perspectives and a commitment to understanding what may not, initially, make sense (professional virtues described in more detail in Chapter 2). In a more active sense, rhetorical skills are also crucial to the bridging of difference through persuasion (Abram 2017). Beyond these interpersonal dynamics, however, heritage experts stress how buildings and sites facilitate these resolutions. Listening to each other is grounded by a collective effort to listen to what the building or monument itself has to say. Site meetings occupy and resolve forms of indeterminacy that arise in the disjunction between policy and site, and from the overlapping but distinct forms of expertise that are assembled in relation to it. The aim is to reconcile differences that cannot be resolved in a straightforwardly procedural way. From various perspectives their emphasis on the “feel” ascertained through direct engagement with a building, highlights how their perspectives are materially “enacted” (Mol 2002) through these meetings (and see Chapters 6, 7 and 8). The site makes different things visible and knowable, though different heritage professionals encounter this in different ways. At times difference takes the form of complementarity. Alison, unaware of the precise nature of the consent process, asks William to clarify, just as her acknowledged ignorance of the practicalities of stone working is compensated for by the presence of a mason. Heritage managers have oversight of the consent process, but often lack a detailed understanding of the historic context and significance of specific monuments, something their

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colleagues in the Cultural Resources Team (often with a background in the old Inspectorate) provide. Physical presence is understood to facilitate resolution, insofar as problems are more tangible and easy to grasp. Graham, the district architect responsible for Glasgow Cathedral, argues that no matter how much paperwork is produced, “the building needs to be there with its own voice and views, and that adds to the decision-making process immensely”. If too much is formalised and codified, the building’s “voice” becomes lost. Inspired by recent work, we have seen in this section how sites and buildings are “conjured” (Abram 2017) through the choreographed interactions of conservation professionals within the meeting. Extending this recent anthropological work, we have highlighted how sites and buildings are in turn understood as key actors in these decision-making processes, helping to “conjure” the decisions that are made in their proximity. Through these interactions, it is evident how decisions materialise not only through spoken words but also – and indissolubly – through the physical and tactile interactions with specific material contexts (explored further in Chapters 7 and 8). In the next section, we further develop this focus considering how ideas of “character” are materially enacted through meetings.

Characterful contexts Kenneth, a heritage manager was originally trained as an architect and has a postgraduate degree in architectural conservation. He is responsible for regulating work relating to Dunoon Pier, a Category A listed structure, overseen by the Bute and Argyll Local Authority. Originally built in 1835, it was substantially extended and modified in the late nineteenth century and fell out of use in the late twentieth century following the construction of a larger, modern quay where the car ferry now docks. We are there for a meeting with various representatives of the local authority and with the project architect for an early consultation on their proposals for a regeneration scheme. In contrast to the meeting at Dunkeld, these people participate as “stakeholders”, external actors whose interests only partly coincide with the conservationist remit of HS. Kenneth has earlier told TY that from his perspective, the point of the meeting is both to set out what is possible from a regulatory perspective and to encourage outcomes that have positive implications for the historic environment. He is mindful that the pier is in a poor state of repair and that until recently demolition seemed the most likely outcome. Kenneth’s approach is consistent with the organisation’s shift to give increasing support for “appropriate” schemes, where these contribute to other forms of development (Cooper 2010: 151). A central focus of the meeting is the “character” of the pier. Kenneth seeks to convey this to others as a key arbiter of the kinds of changes that HS can support. While often referred to, particularly in a listed-buildings context, the term is rarely explicitly defined. As one of a complex of interlinked concepts, including “authenticity” and “integrity”, the term is distinguished, in part, through

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the imputation of a personified material essence. Writing as a practising heritage professional, Julian Holder describes how ideas of historic “character” have an in-built moral appeal that can be of instrumental utility, but which also leave professionals open to charges of subjectivity and lack of rigor: Not only is it hard to define but it shares with related concepts such as integrity and honesty, a family resemblance by employing what Ruskin termed ‘the pathetic fallacy’. That is to say we apply concepts properly belonging to human beings to inanimate objects. […] To accept the concept ensures that all the participants are already treating buildings as people, as living breathing beings, whose fate we care about, and not simply as bricks and lime mortar. (2001: np) In practice, assessments of character are often said to come down to a “feel” that derives from a complex interplay between materials, aesthetics and time. Those involved in regulating the development of listed buildings make instrumental use of these understandings in order to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable intervention. The Scottish Historic Environment Policy (SHEP), the keyframing policy document at the time, describes the government’s approach as follows: The challenge for sustainable management of the historic environment and how it contributes to the vitality of modern life, is to identify its key characteristics and to establish the boundaries within which change can continue so that it enhances rather than diminishes historic character. (Historic Scotland 2011: 1.6) These overarching commitments emerge in practice as a range of specific assessments. Kenneth starts the meeting by outlining the key elements of the pier’s character and the planning implications that arise from this: “It’s a very simple structure, so anything you do needs to respect that. Most of the character is expressed externally”. He goes on to outline the range of aesthetic, material and structural elements that comprise this: The whole thing about the pier is its lightness and the importance of being able to see through it. Below deck you get nice views of the sea and the sense of the structure above almost floating. It’s nice and light and airy. It’s all about connection. Also important is the function for which it was built: “as a pier or dock so even if this is taken away this should remain a readable part of the structure”. In addition to this issue of “readability” some further general implications derive from this. As a working pier that has adapted over time, “part of that pier’s character has been [that] it’s constantly been bolted on, bits have happened, and other little blancmange structures have come onto it for a while

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then they’ve got swept away later on”. The pier retains its character not despite but because it has constantly changed. “Character” is here understood as the material embodiment of a specific form of change. A particular logic of change is seen as an intrinsic quality of the structure. This general assessment frames a series of more specific judgements. Standing on the pier, Kenneth enthuses about the possibility of a new pontoon that would allow access to the sea and would be “consistent with the character of connection”, albeit as a new structure and for the purpose of serving leisure boats: “It would be nice to give access back and to feel like the pier is still working”. Likewise, he responds positively to the local authority representative’s suggestion that the wood-clad buildings could be re-used to house restaurants, to attract people from the town and from the sea: “we need to find uses that make these connections”. “Character” is here articulated as an idea of continuity of function and use underpinned by the logic of connectivity. In later interactions, the implications of these ideas of character are drawn out as a series of distinctions between elements of the building of relatively more or less significance. We take a tour of the building, stopping at various points to consider particular elements of the structure – those of particular historic importance and those which development is most likely to affect. The architect and local authority representative are mostly there to understand the conservation concerns from the HS perspective and to clarify how these are likely to bear on their proposals. The roof is rotting and Kenneth recommends cutting and splicing new timber, “to retain the original where possible”, so that the new wood reads “as a distinct but sensitive insertion”. Inside one of the main Victorian structures, white weatherboards with peeling paint are seen as “integral to its character” and therefore “to be kept if at all possible”. In the second of the main buildings, we pause to evaluate windows with original bevelled glass: “I think you’d be struggling to change these – they’re really quite significant”. The local authority representative wonders about new windows, which would be lowermaintenance and more energy-efficient, but Kenneth is insistent, “it’s about the character. We wouldn’t want to see the glazing bars lost”. In this instance “character” is specified as an aesthetic quality that places significant limits to acceptable change. Elsewhere, a set of windows with replaced modern glass elicit a different response: deemed less intrinsic to the character on account of their “already compromised” nature, double glazing is likely to be permissible. While considerations of “originality”, here understood as “faithfulness” to the existing structure, are often an element of character, the two concepts do not always coincide. Kenneth and the architect stop to discuss some ornate detailing over two of the internal doors. “Is it original?”, the architect wonders. Unsure how old it is, Kenneth taps and prods. He arrives at no definitive conclusion but sees the issue of originality as ultimately unimportant in this context: “I think they’re great, really nice and blousy – that’s what the seaside is all about!”. Then later, “they’re here, they’re part of the building’s history, so let’s keep them, it’s seaside architecture – fun and a bit overblown”.

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Back on the pier, we congregate in a blustery corner, words shouted into the strong wind, sometimes barely audible. Peering down through the deck, waves can be glimpsed through large cracks, framed by bitumen encrusted timber decking. The timbers have a character of their own and contribute to the valued qualities of openness and connection. How to reconcile these with the need to allow access, consistent with health and safety legislation? The tension is not straightforwardly between the retention of character and concerns of a pragmatic and legislative kind, but between contradictory ideas of character of piers: aesthetically of lightness and airiness; and functionally as places on which people walk and circulate, “connection”, as Kenneth puts it. Current legislation makes it difficult to reconcile the two. The discussion aims at “compromise”, arriving at the suggestion of a boarded runway down the middle with the sides left open. Connection “enhances” character, even as some character is diminished by the loss of visibility. At the ticket office building, the issue of the relationship between these distinct versions of character emerges in a different form. Now an unremarkable squat pebble-dashed building, Kenneth is concerned that it has lost “its character of being light and open”, and that “the character of connection is diminished”. He underscores the point by narrating a history of ticket offices, controlling entrance and exit to the pier, for passengers and for people out for a stroll. In the face of public sector funding cuts, Kenneth recognises the project budget is limited, but even so recommends “some cosmetic additions would go a long way to making it feel more part of the pier”. In part because of the “severely compromised” nature of the structure, this historical and functional interpretation of the character in this instance outweighs concerns to retain originality. Kenneth suggests “perhaps something quite contemporary, quite bold” would work. At Dunkeld, HS employees broadly share an understanding of the conservation philosophy that is also central to their shared institutional aims. Here, by contrast, the point of the meeting is to establish these conservation principles and to find ways of reconciling these with other potentially conflicting interests. On the train back from the meeting, Kenneth explains that his role is not just to enforce legislation but to try to encourage forms of development that will promote these conservationist concerns. In the case of the pier, he tells me that in the long-term, its character will best be protected by development that gives it a viable future. His overarching aim is not to prevent change, but to promote forms of change that are consistent with the pier’s existing character. Victor Tardos (2005: 9) highlights how legal professionals deploy the concept of character, as a way of assigning qualities to people and abstracting actions that do not belong. Likewise, ideas about character, from the perspective of architectural understandings within a listing framework, define what is “essential” about a building, and therefore enable distinctions to be made between elements that can be changed or removed and those that need preserving. Ideas of “character” enact sites as specific objects of conservation. We have seen through this example how the meeting makes the pier into a particular kind

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of object, attributing it with specific material and meaningful qualities as a thing of “character”. The dynamics of the meeting are integral to the ways these qualities are assigned through the interactions of those involved. The meeting discursively assembles the pier. However, from the perspective of those involved, the character of the place is also what makes the meeting. As in the case of Dunkeld, the meeting can be seen as a way of drawing out possibilities from the place, here framed by an overriding concern with its “character”, in a way that also draws together people. Where Dunkeld demonstrates how sites help to align the perspectives of those who share common institutional aims, the case of Dunoon Pier reveals how HS seeks to exert influence in contexts where conservation concerns exist alongside other interests.

Office meeting Site meetings exemplify how meetings organise knowledge through the dynamic interplay of people and place. In this section, we explore how buildings are objectified through a different kind of meeting located away from the sites that are their focus. In relation to the listing meeting examined in this section, heritage experts aim to understanding the “feel” and “character” of buildings at a distance. In these meetings, buildings are similarly understood to participate as agents in the decisions made about them. However, here the organisation of perspective involves heritage experts in qualitatively different articulations of people and place. In a room in the headquarters of HS, some of the heritage managers congregate for their weekly meeting. This team is responsible for the process by which historic buildings are designated under the process of “listing” that provides varying levels of statutory protection. People file in, clutching hot drinks and piles of paper. Pleasantries are exchanged. Without command, the talk dies down and a tone of formality gradually settles. Though nothing has been said, it is obvious that we are “in” the meeting – a socially delimited space with its own expectations and assumptions. Faces look suddenly serious, attentive, eyes and words connecting, oriented by the agenda that all have before them, by the circular composition of chairs around a table, and by unstated conventions of discursive turn-taking. Chaired by the team leader in an affable but business-like manner, there are a series of updates and news items before presentation of the cases for designation commences. For each building, there is a short presentation given by the officer overseeing the case. Today a range of buildings are being considered, including a Victorian hospital, a brutalist 1960s school and a range of domestic houses. Some of these are already listed buildings and are being considered for “de-listing”, normally in response to requests from owners. In other cases, the question is whether to list an un-listed building or to change the level of an existing designation (e.g. from B to A). At the head of the long table around which all are congregated, images of each case are projected on a screen, to a running commentary of the

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key points and issues. The tone is informal, descriptions of the buildings mixed with jokes and asides relating to the site visits. Presentations begin with contextual information on the architecture, period of construction and background of the case. Photographic images of key external facades are presented before moving to internal photographs of significant architectural features. Site visits to buildings are normally undertaken alone and provide listing officers with an empirical understanding of buildings, which they bring to their presentations (see Chapter 4). A sense of the space is conveyed through movement back and forwards between pictures and plans. The meeting room has a sanitised institutional feel that strikingly contrasts with the qualities of the historic buildings the team have gathered to discuss: beech effect furniture, neutrally painted walls and strip lighting. As a “non-place” (Augé 2009), the room engenders a globally recognisable office aesthetic that seems to deliberately erase spatial specificity. These qualities of placelessness, act to direct attention beyond the immediate locale of the meeting, and to amplify the “character” – the term is repeatedly used – of the different buildings the team have gathered to consider. Seeking to understand these buildings through the detachment of distance the spatial and material qualities of meeting rooms are incidental to a gaze that is directed beyond these to the specific character of “the building itself ”. In a discussion of expert knowledge, Dominic Boyer observes, “The focus of intellectual labor upon rationality decoporealizes intellectual selfawareness while lending ‘objects’ of rational attention a peculiarly material character” (2005: 243). In relation to these listing meetings, it is likewise evident how “decorporealized” and deliberately characterless performances of professional identity intensify focus on the material characteristics and qualities of the objects of assessment. The individual self-recedes through professional vocabularies and modulated forms of speech that direct attention beyond the speaker and to the buildings of which they speak. In this, as in other meetings, a diverse range of building periods and styles are under consideration. A 1960s modernist school quickly produces consensus. Amongst those gathered there is some personal enthusiasm for the building as a piece of design, but the collective assessment is that it is not sufficiently “architecturally significant” to meet the listing criteria. Rachel brings this brief, consensual discussion to a conclusion: “It’s interesting but very difficult to justify”. Another officer presents the case of a Victorian police box. It is already listed but renovation work is being proposed on some adjacent steps and the council want it moved. The council are proposing de-listing the building in order to allow this, arguing that it does not meet the listing criteria. Rachel, Head of the Listing Team, is keen to keep the structure. It clearly meets the listing criteria but, in light of the character of the structure, she is happy for it to be moved. Listing relates to the setting, not simply the structure. There is consensus regarding the acceptability of moving the structure, but uncertainty as to how this can be achieved within the legislative framework. Is a new listing needed or can the existing listing be amended? Discussion focuses on whether and how this will be bureaucratically accommodated.

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During presentations, a collective understanding of these spaces is evoked through the subtle interplay between images and spoken words. Images elicit qualitative descriptions of the experience and “feel” of the building and are the cue for the presenter to provide further context and description of elements of the structure that are not well conveyed visually. Images of photographs and plans are invoked where verbal descriptions reach their limits. Listing officers attempt to convey their “experience” of buildings from the site visits they have made. Many have degrees in art history or architectural history. Conversation interweaves a technical descriptive language of space and aesthetics, with the evaluative concerns of the legislation, which foregrounds architectural historical “interest”. There is talk of the “narrative” of buildings and of their “visual grammar”, of levels of “intactness” and “integrity”. As with site meetings, listing meetings constitute the buildings as central and significant elements of the decisions that are made in relation to them. A detailed empirical understanding of the building is a necessary first step in the listing process. This must be linked to the formal listing criteria, in order to determine appropriate designation. Buildings are assessed in relation to three key criteria, namely, (1) “age and rarity”, (2) “architectural and historic interest” and (3) “close historical association”, for example, through a relationship between a building and an important person or event. Relating these criteria to specific buildings requires “judgement”. Team members make these judgements as professionals, and regard “personal” responses as irrelevant to the interpretations they make. Subjective assessments emerge in the interstices of the process in irreverent and ironically un-self-censored remarks and asides. An interesting Victorian hospital is presented to round approval: “Ooh, that’s really nice!”, “Wow, what a great building!”, “I really like that”. The case of a listed building with un-consented work receives a less enthusiastic assessment: “Oh yes, it’s dreadful!”. Personal, subjective responses are deliberately overplayed in ways that simultaneously acknowledge their existence and mark them as extrinsic to the process. At various points, the team leader, aware of our presence as researchers, makes explicit for our benefit the otherwise unstated but crucially important point: “it’s not about whether we like it or not”. Participating as embodiments of expert knowledge and engendering specific roles, other more “personal” judgements are factored out. They may be expressed but go unrecorded and are not recognised as legitimate considerations in the decision-making process. Professional judgement often converges in tacit and easy agreement. Sometimes differences of perspective are a source of conflict and debate. Unlike “personal” differences, which these meetings actively exclude (compare Alexander 2017), these professional differences are important. Robust decision-making requires that these are considered and aligned through a process of dialogue. As in the context of site meetings, buildings are understood to have empirically objective qualities that mediate and ground these differences. At various points during the presentations, differences of opinion emerge as to the relative interest of

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buildings’ “character” and “historic significance” – central criteria for the evaluation of buildings. Conversation amplifies these differences of perspective with the ultimate aim of aligning them. The rhetorical mechanisms by which this occurs are subtle: additional perspectives are elicited from others in the team until consensus is achieved; further contexts are evoked, for example, by reference to other cases or previously undisclosed details of the building. The meeting is said to be determined by “egalitarian” and “consensual” principles of decision-making but, relative to any given case, there is a tacit acknowledgement of a hierarchy of expertise. Perspectives are orchestrated by the team leader, who brings in people representing relevant expertise as required. Questions are directed at “moving the process on” through consideration of comparative examples, experience and various forms of evidence: “Do you know if there are any other surviving examples from this period?”; “Have you seen anything of this quality before?”. In most cases, consensus settles easily as a collectively shared interpretation of how the building and listing criteria relate. Where this is in doubt, the team leader interjects, sometimes to assert her own judgement, but more often to make explicit where consensus seems to lie. Sometimes differences of interpretation or uncertainties about the building make a decision impossible. Minutes record actions, for example, further research or additional site visits, in anticipation of re-consideration at subsequent meetings. While the process presupposes that differences of opinion will legitimately emerge, it also anticipates their negotiation and resolution. As discussed by Evans (2017) in relation to urban regeneration planning meetings in London, listing meetings anticipate institutional futures and are configured by the expectation of institutional convergence towards this. In an interview with Rachel, Head of the Listing Team, she makes this explicit: We’re very much about making a collegiate decision so there’s never one person says, ‘Oh, that should be listed, and they go off and list it’. It’s very much the whole team taking part. We’ve got different knowledge and expertise, but […] absolutely… every single case will be looked at, and the decision made by the whole team. Michael, a listing officer, explains that meetings are particularly important where a decision is unclear or where there may be initial disagreement: If you’re not certain, it needs to be re-thought through and that’s why the decision is never made at one meeting unless it’s obvious. Sometimes you can have up to ten meetings on the same building, because it’s complex. That’s why the meetings are important. You end up at a situation where, ‘Ah, now we can take this forwards’. Whereas before you weren’t. That kind of galvanises at the meeting. On occasion, individual members of the team can feel aggrieved where their own perspective is overlooked or marginalised. However, meetings are also understood

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in more intellectually expansive terms. Michael makes this idea explicit in the image of the team brought together in what he terms a “collective brain”: “individually you may not know but normally consensus emerges through discussion”. In relation to the UK and Turkish meetings in structured project environments, Catherine Alexander well describes how individual positions associated with specific roles are “combined into a group with a common direction” (2017: 83). Likewise, at HS, meetings are moments of collective revelation through which knowledge is seen to congeal as a sum that is more than the parts. In the Listing Team, as in other parts of the organisation, meetings facilitate the goal of institutional consistency through aligning different kinds of knowledge, understanding and experience. In contrast to site meetings, where the building is physically present, these office-based meetings constitute buildings as a kind of absent presence through the performances that are imagined as incidental to the character they seek to convey. This produces a qualitatively different kind of meeting, associated with the objectification of conservation objects in a specific form. Such office meetings are associated with representational technologies that enable buildings to appear “as a whole”. Re-composed in these meetings through words, images and diagrams, it becomes possible to compare, juxtapose and assess across multiple sites and contexts. Even so, a common orientation remains in the idea of buildings as key actors in the decisions that are made. Members of the Listing Team make this point explicit in a frequently invoked phrase that foregrounds the empirical existence of the building and the agency this exerts: “It’s either listable or it’s not!”.

Conclusion: the place of organisational knowledge Ethnographic accounts of meetings highlight how these events are able to “conjure context” (Abram 2017; Schwartzman 1989), constructing specific objects of attention and intervention. In a range of institutional settings, these have shown how the social dynamics of a meeting are integral to the organisation of realities external to these institutional spaces (Alexander 2017; Brown and Green 2017; Corsín Jiménez and Estalella 2017; Evans 2017; Reed 2017; Sandler and Thedvall 2016). Extending these perspectives to conservation, we have shown how meetings render the historic environment legible as objects of attention, intervention and assessment. We have seen how their specific qualities and attributes are selectively disclosed through the choreography of people as they move through buildings, how focus is attuned through gestures, words and the documents that frame their engagements. Away from these sites, buildings are re-composed at a remove through the discursive and representational technologies that allow these to be understood “as a whole”. Across these cases, it is evident that buildings and monuments are enacted as different kinds of things, in relation to the different questions and issues that meetings pose with regard to them. We have also highlighted how meetings are institutional spaces in which the future of conservation objects is highlighted and negotiated in relation to their past and present.

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While recognising how meetings are therefore materially performative, our account has also sought to surface what these buildings and sites are imagined to institutionally perform. Thus, we have highlighted heritage professionals’ own understandings of the active role of the historic environment in shaping institutional processes of decision-making. While describing the contexts that meetings “conjure” (Abram 2017), we have also shown how decisions are understood to be conjured through the proximity of people to buildings and sites. On site, this often works through a logic of disaggregation: differences of perspective that may seem abstractly intractable are imagined to be resolved through the physical proximity to particular material contexts. By contrast, conservation objects become legible and comparable through the more ostensibly totalising gaze enabled by the detached focus of the listing meeting. Across these cases, meetings objectify historic sites in ways that render them as key actors in these institutional processes. For conservation professionals at HS, buildings and monuments are seen as participants in the institutional decisions that are made, helping to reconcile otherwise disparate perspectives (Figure 3.2). While scholarship on heritage often highlights how the actions of heritage experts cause the historic environment to exist as a particular kind of object, it rarely examines these reverse forms of causality by which material contexts are framed as the cause of institutional actions and decisions. In this way, the chapter develops ideas set out in earlier chapters, highlighting an underlying logic on which the present is configured via a commitment to the past. Meetings are particular arenas in which this past is rendered as a materially consequential focus of institutional attention and provides an arena in which these consequences can be drawn out for the present and future of historic remains. For heritage professionals, meetings are organisational devices that help to deal with various forms of contingency, uncertainty and irresolution. Through these organisational devices, we glimpse how heritage conservation is not so much a coherent set of principles but a set of practices for producing coherence. Meetings are spaces for the resolution of various forms of indeterminacy. They produce outcomes that are rarely entirely surprising but are not pre-determined nor wholly predictable. From the perspective of those involved, this is not only because heritage conservation requires situated reconciliations between different forms of expertise, but also because the question of how these come together is always in relation to specific material circumstances. Meetings, in other words, involve a series of practices that are not organised, but organising (Mol 2002; Mosse 2005). This ethnographic lens highlights a range of dynamics that have received relatively little attention in wider discussions of bureaucracy, where discursive analyses have often acted to reproduce assumptions about bureaucratic and institutional conduct as immaterial and placeless (Hull 2012a). Inspired by ANT, recent work has begun to challenge these ideas, highlighting how what people know (the “substance” of institutional knowledge) is always an artefact of where and with what: the material contexts that support particular kinds of claims. While our account of meetings likewise highlights the institutional significance

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During site meetings, buildings and monuments are framed as key actors in the decision-making process (T.Yarrow). FIGURE 3.2 

of materiality and place, our concern is less with the analytic attribution of actions (as in theories of “distributed agency”) and more with the ethnographic question of how actions are materially attributed by those institutional actors involved in these practices. Rather than focus on the agency of things, we have highlighted the agency that conservation professionals extend to historic artefacts and buildings. Amongst the many materials, artefacts and places that help to structure these events, only some are an explicit focus of these. Meetings make the past matter in the linked senses of bringing it into focus and giving it material form. This focus has its counterpart in the expectations of humility and deference encountered in previous chapters (particularly, Chapter 2), which orient the interactions within these meetings. If buildings have a “voice” and “views”, meetings are ways of listening to them.

4 SUBJECTS AS OBJECTS

Amongst the many historic buildings, how are some selected as worthy of state protection? Rachel, Head of the Listing Team, describes the process by which buildings are designated: Contrary to [public] opinion, it is a very rigorous process, and we make every effort to make it as un-subjective as possible […] So, you have to sort of leave that at the door. So, we certainly list [buildings] that, personally, I don’t like, but that’s completely irrelevant. It’s about assessing against the criteria. Her explanation foregrounds the importance of “objectivity”, an ideal that has been axiomatic to the practice of heritage professionals and the academic disciplines that have been central to understanding and management of the past. Architectural history, archaeology and art history, amongst other disciplines, were marshalled to understand the unique qualities of specific historical periods. Since subjectivity was seen as a barrier to knowledge in the form of “bias”, these involved various versions of empiricism in which detachment and objectivity were central. Ideas of objectivity also informed the management, regulation and designation of the built environment. Protection of the intrinsic qualities of historic remains involved the careful separation of “then” from “now”, “past” from “present”. Understandings of the value of objectivity have been the subject of sustained critiques from the 1980s onwards, particularly from critical heritage studies scholars (Emerick 2014; Smith 2006; Waterton 2010; Winter 2013). Keith Emerick, for instance, highlights how the ideal of objectivity both reflects and consolidates the authority of heritage professionals:

DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-6

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Their expertise is based on a narrow range of values that have become intellectualised over years of academic definition and they invariably think of themselves as members of an individual discipline – such as archaeology or architectural history – rather than as cultural heritage managers. As a consequence these values and the associated practice are seen as objective, scientific and rational. The consequence has been that the combination of expertise and specific values has favoured a particular form of knowledge, while the concept of heritage generated through this intellectualisation has become the ‘norm’, privileging a limited range of attributes: age, antiquity, aesthetics, scientific progress, attribution and connoisseurship. (2014: 2–3) Here, as in a range of related critiques, the objectification of heritage as a set of material remains that are both literally and figuratively stable, is understood to suppress the underlying basis of heritage knowledge in the subjective interpretations and specific views of various elites. Ideals of objectivity are invoked to support a received view of history, which reflects the interests of the state and ruling classes and silences other stories about the past. In this chapter, we bracket normative concerns with the nature and value of objectivity. Our question is not whether this ideal is real or illusory, beneficial or problematic, but how heritage practitioners utilise ideas of objectivity in the context of their own practice. Tracing the emergence of the ideal of objectivity through a range of epistemic transformations that shaped the emergence of scientific methods in the mid-nineteenth century, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison propose that we approach objectivity not as a concept, but rather as a “smear of meanings”, relating to constellations of practice that can be empirically studied: Instead of a pre-existing ideal being applied to a workaday world, it is the other way around: the ideal and ethos are gradually built up and bodied out by thousands of concrete actions […] To study objectivity in shirtsleeves is to watch objectivity in the making. (2007: 52) This means attending to the contingent and sometimes precarious status of ideals about objectivity, and to how these emerge in relation to “genuine values, rooted in a carefully cultivated self ” (2007: 53). Through an ethnography of trainee surgeons, Maryon McDonald likewise foregrounds “the merits and difficulties that the accomplishment of professional detachment can imply” (2015: 38). She highlights the dilemmas involved in the acquisition of a “surgical body” and the distinct forms of objectivity thereby engendered, particularly through the inculcation of an autonomous, corporeally bounded “self ”. Building on these more situated approaches to objectivity (see also Anderson 2001; Candea et al. 2015), the questions pursued in this chapter are not so much whether or why objectivity is important, as how people understand it to be, and

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what they practically do with those understandings. The chapter draws out the range of practices and ideas through which concepts of objectivity are enacted in the work of heritage professionals. Our account considers how ideas about the difficulties and virtues of being objective take shape in relation to notions of consistency, empiricism, professional judgement and the alignment of differing perspectives. We consider how these emerge in relation to different roles and professional approaches represented within the organisation.

Direct experience Michael is dressed down for our trip but appears smart even in a fleece and stout walking shoes. It is an early start in preparation for a long day involving a twohour drive and ferry crossing at each end. We are going to undertake a site visit to assess the listing status of a derelict modernist school on the island of Bute, triggered by a local authority request for de-listing. We head out of Edinburgh in a hire car that smells strongly of air-freshener. Michael holds strong views on architecture and planning. As we drive, he narrates these as a commentary on the towns and buildings we pass – bypassing the tower blocks of Glasgow then through a series of smaller towns on the south of the River Clyde. A lover of old buildings but not a traditionalist, he is critical of the creeping “pastiche”, and of the “combination of narrow selfinterest and short-sightedness that have led to the diminishing quality of our built environment”. These are what he terms “dinner party” opinions and, though he holds them strongly, he is at pains to point out that such “personal” views have nothing to do with the listing processes he is employed to undertake: this has to be carried out as objectively as possible. “Whatever you might personally think about a building – whether you like it or not – is irrelevant”. He explains that it’s important to be “detached”, “cold” and “clinical” in the way that judgement is exercised. This means sticking scrupulously to the formal listing criteria. Doing this takes a particular kind of person. Interest is required to gain the necessary knowledge of buildings, but personal taste and opinion are irrelevant to the judgements that are made, “there is no room for egos”, as he puts it. Being objective also relates to a particular form of empiricism that is a vital component of the assessment process. According to Michael, the point of the visit is to give the best, most accurate, description of the physical properties of the building. Asked if the listing category of a building is easy to determine on site, he responds: You don’t think like that. You just try and understand the building in terms of what might be important about it. You don’t think, ‘oh clearly this is a Category A, this is clearly listable’. You think, right, what’s interesting about this building? What do I need to photograph to get a sense of this building so that other people [in the listing team] can understand this building?

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Prior to the visit, Michael was on holiday and had little time to do “the provisional”, the background research that is sometimes undertaken before visits. Though he admits this apologetically, he claims that this lack of knowledge can be an advantage, allowing a “pure experience” of the space, unencumbered by the kinds of contextual information that can cloud understanding and judgement: Quite often I go without having done any provisional [research]. If you look into something before, you can get an idea about it that’s not true. It’s what it was, or what it isn’t any more type thing, or what some people’s aspirations for it [were] at a time that’s now passed. It can cloud your judgement a bit so it’s best to come at it afresh, I think, without any kind of preconceived notions of what it is and photograph it as what it is. An impartial understanding of the building “as it is” requires that assessment of its architectural merit and importance be suspended until after the site visit. On arrival at the building, it becomes apparent how these ideals of objectivity are enmeshed in the practices through which the site is encountered. The building has been derelict for over five years. The place is permeated by the smell of damp. There is obvious evidence that people have broken in and of low-level vandalism: tables and chairs strewn around, panelling punched through and the crunch of broken glass under feet. Some of the rooms are left more or less as they would have been – posters and student work on walls, pictures of staff and students on notice boards. It is strange to see the haircuts and clothes of five years ago already looking dated and that a once bustling building is now so uncannily silent. TY finds the atmosphere “eerie” and remarks on this. Asked if he shares this feeling, Michael assents. But he is also clear that such emotions are irrelevant to the listing and need to be separated from any assessments and descriptions that are made. He explains that, as a listing officer, you are not assessing the building in terms of how it is now, but rather in relation to its importance and architectural merit. Physical “condition” is one index of historic significance and needs to be taken into account. These are regarded as separate from the emotions elicited by dereliction and abandonment. The visit is structured but the process is not mechanical. Michael works his way around the building with logical and deliberate movements. He uses a camera to document what he sees. The camera attunes his attention in specific ways. As he walks, the camera is outstretched or clutched to the chest, as if leading the way. Rooms are approached as a series of vistas. Shots are taken of the four main aspects of each room before close-ups are taken of important details. When he looks, his vision is guided by a wider set of expectations about the kinds of detail that can constitute important elements of a building’s character. The images will act as an aide memoir when he comes to narrate the case for consideration to others in the weekly listing meeting. He adds that the site visit adds an “immediacy of experience” that the images do not convey and gives an idea of the “narrative” of the building, the ways in which it “reads” as a series of interconnecting spatial

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elements that are more than the sum of its parts. That’s something you can only understand by being in the building, seeing it “in the flesh” as he puts it. As he works his way through the rooms, he describes what he is seeing. “So this must have been a later addition” he speculates out loud as he tries to resolve the temporal sequence posed by a strange configuration of rooms by the entrance. He knocks on one of the walls and finds it to be a stud wall: “that makes a lot more sense”. Central to the endeavour is the issue of what is “original” and what are “later additions”. In her study of trainee surgeons, McDonald observes: “Students are learning to be affected. Seeing ‘what there is’ always requires a practised vision but vision is never solely vision” (2015: 14). These students learn to see the cadavers through a form of sight that is aided by touch, attuned by knowledge and shaped by the various tools they use. In the HS listing team, the descriptive language and documentary methods are primarily visual, but “seeing” is likewise a way of being affected that is not just visual (Grasseni 2007a). Michael’s understanding of the space is aided by other senses: materials are touched to work out what they are; walls are tapped in efforts to understand what is structural. These ways of seeing involve active forms of passivity that are also anchored in ethical and epistemic commitments to “humility” and “deference” to the past (Chapter 2). Site visits are usually made alone but are framed by documentary conventions and trained ways of seeing that are distributed throughout the team. Assessors, as another member of the Listing Team puts it, must “move through buildings in a certain way”, working systematically to make sure nothing is overlooked. Many of those in the Listing Team have degrees in architectural history or art history. Guided by this training, they learn to see buildings as composites of different architectural styles and periods and to articulate their value in terms that borrow from these disciplines. Such disciplinary understandings inform both the approach required to interpret a building and the gradual accumulation of comparative knowledge of other buildings regionally and nationally. Taken together this experience produces an understanding of a building’s “character” as the subtle composite of a range of factors (as defined in Chapter 3; see also Yarrow 2018b). These include use of materials, condition of fabric, degree of “intactness”, aesthetic qualities and architectural interest, but Listing Team members stress how “character” emerges in the interplay of these factors, which are not in this sense criteria to be mechanically applied. The “collective empiricism” (Daston and Galison 2007) that underpins the process of listing thus relates to a capacity to exercise judgement grounded in forms of expertise that are carefully shaped through training and experience. Subjectivity is here a form of objectivity (compare Shapin 2012): acting through these principles, understandings and methods, the body of Listing Team members can be seen as a kind of instrument, recognising and channelling feelings in responses to buildings in ways that conform to broader professional and disciplinary norms, even as they are registered, felt and experienced in the embodied response of specific individuals.

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Professional judgement Ideas about the importance of “direct observation”, foreground an understanding of objectivity as empirical: sites must be understood “as they are”, stripped of the subjective interpretations that might cloud this. Questions of their importance are regarded as secondary and distinct. Foundational to the listing process is a distinction between the “intrinsic” qualities of buildings and the “ judgements” that are subsequently made. In this process, the shift is understood not as one from objectivity to subjectivity, but between different versions of objectivity: of observation and of assessment, respectively. What makes an assessment objective? James, a heritage manager, highlights the important distinction between personal preference and an academically grounded appreciation of what is historically important, “There has to be an intellectual basis. Something like a concrete block could actually be incredibly important. It’s not necessarily beautiful. Not all listed buildings are beautiful country houses or cute thatched cottages”. Michael similarly makes explicit this distinction between personal and professional judgement: If you like the look of a building and someone else doesn’t that’s irrelevant. It’s whether or not it’s an important building […] Some people can go into a building and love it and the next person can think it’s an eyesore. That’s not really relevant to the listing criteria. This historic importance is assessed on the basis of the “age, rarity and architectural or historic interest”, regardless of the interest it may hold for specific individuals. The idea of “professional judgement” encapsulates this sense of an opinion that is made by a person, acting as an embodiment of professional expertise. Site visits enable detailed empirical understanding of the intrinsic character of buildings but, to assess significance, further contextual factors must be understood. Members of the team undertake archival research, secondary reading and consult with other experts. In order to determine whether and at what level a building is listed, it is assessed in relation to a set of criteria that are formally laid out and consistently applied (these are outlined in Chapter 3). The objectivity of the process by which heritage is designated entails the existence of clearly defined criteria and the need for expertise in order to interpret and apply these. These elements of objectivity are mutually constitutive: professional judgement is made in relation to specified criteria; these criteria, being clear but abstract, call for interpretation and context that requires expertise. Members of the Listing Team do not claim to lack “personal opinion”, and nor do they entirely discount the possibility these opinions sometimes shape the decisions that are made. Rather, insofar as their judgements are made in accordance with their trained expertise, they claim such opinions are incidental and irrelevant to the assessments that are made.

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Aligning perspectives Even to the extent that professional judgements are in this sense procedurally objective, they may be inconsistent with one another or mutually contradictory. This poses a challenge in an institutional context where another form of objectivity is also valued: the ideal that judgements across the organisation should be consistent with one another (Hoag and Hull 2017). How does this happen? We have already seen in the previous chapter how meetings work to stage such differences with the aim of reconciling these. Framed as a matter of institutional consistency, objectivity is also the aim and outcome of a range of less formal negotiations across HS. In the office of the Heritage Management Team for the South West, there is silence, punctuated only by the background noise of typing. Located in a large bay-fronted room, desks are arranged around walls, loosely delineated by role, piled high with green casework files, maps and other documents. Computer screens reveal other key elements of the work involved, flicking between emails, site plans, maps and photographs. The respective roles of those in the team require elements of personal autonomy, materially expressed in the architecture and layout of the room – a series of individuated spaces in an open-plan office. The work also requires “teamwork”, to coordinate and align the different perspectives of those involved. Interactions are generated by questions, issues and problems that arise from the intersecting roles that people perform. Emails elicit conversations; conversations provoke emails; people come in from other parts of the organisation with queries; advice is solicited stimulating conversation to which other members of the team are drawn in. One unremarkable incident amongst many illustrates how the creation of collective positions emerges through day-to-day office interactions. Prompted by a query from a member of the public, a woman from another team within Heritage Management who deals with Environmental Impact Assessments, appears at the door to discuss a case with the team. The objection, she explains to one of the casework officers, is on the basis that the noise from workings of a proposed fish farm will affect the setting of a nearby scheduled monument. Noise is an unusual basis for objection. As she is unclear what approach to take, she has come to consult the Casework Team for the area responsible for the monument. As the conversation develops other members of the team are pulled into the discussion: “I think noise is very difficult to object to”, a heritage manager with expertise in listed buildings comments. His counterpart who deals with scheduled monuments is broadly in agreement but highlights the particular context of the monument and the explicit mention of noise in the HS’s guidance notes on setting: “If it’s a priory there’s some spiritual value, so it will have an impact”. His listed buildings colleague does not dispute the theoretical possibility that noise can have a “setting impact” but is sceptical about the scale: I don’t agree the atmosphere can be affected that much. I think the bar is very high for noise impact – that would be difficult for us as an organisation to object to. The bar for noise has to be very high.

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Others are working at their desks, their focus only half on the conversation. Perspectives are interjected and called upon as different elements of the issue are considered. Different interpretations are explored, always amicably if sometimes robustly articulated, until consensus begins to emerge. As is often the case, the consensus is a partial and provisional one but is sufficient as the basis on which to proceed. In this instance, there is agreement that the theoretical possibility of a “setting impact” exists but doubt as to whether this would be of a scale to warrant objection. Further research and possibly a site visit will be needed to determine how legislation should be interpreted in relation to the specific characteristics of the monument and the particular nature of the noise impact. The incident exemplifies a broader set of practices through which perspectives are aligned outside the more formal contexts of meetings. These interactions are themselves shaped by shared understandings and familiar forms of sociality but are unfettered by formal institutional protocol and take place off-record. If these qualities lend the outcomes of such interactions a provisional quality, their lack of protocol is also in some respects a virtue. Un-encumbered by formal procedure, decisions can be made quickly and as they are required. Often underpinned by informal relationships, expertise can be sought from colleagues, regardless of institutionally mandated roles. Taken together, the various formal and informal modes by which perspectives are aligned constitute a set of practices by which a specific kind of institutional objectivity is attained. Describing objections to government plans, Patrick, a heritage manager, elucidates the importance of collective decision-making in arriving at a “robust” perspective: You obviously need to be able to defend our positions that we reach and set out in planning consultations. So where we’re objecting to government it’s never a case of an individual officer having made that decision to object, it has always been in consultation with our line managers and other colleagues who to get their opinions on what’s important about a certain site and what elements of its surroundings that needs to be protected. To assert that such knowledge is robust and objective is in this context to highlight the basis of decisions in knowledge that conforms to an “agency perspective”, distinct from the specific professional views of any given individual. Objectivity as institutional consistency is also ensured by the less dialogical process by which difficult cases are referred to higher levels of the organisation. Patrick, explains that in Heritage Management: There’s a clear hierarchy and we have a certain amount of discretion but anything that you might consider could be controversial and become a case where there could be a lot of publicity, you automatically refer that to your line manager, and he may well refer it further up the line. So, a sort of consistency of approach. A sort of agency-wide perspective is ensured by that which is a good thing.

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The institutional procedure thus achieves bureaucratic consistency through a logic of vertical encompassment: the perspectives of people at “lower” levels of the organisation are aligned in deference to people at “higher” levels. In an account of academic peer-review, Don Brennies (2009) highlights how objectivity exists as an outcome and artefact of processes of negotiation (as what negotiation produces), not as the pre-existing reality to which the processes respond. While heritage professionals at HS acknowledge the role they play in these decisions, along with the need for interpretation and judgement, Brennies’ analysis is at odds with the key assumptions they make about this process. In the examples described, it is the fact of an objectively shared reality which helps and requires that these views be aligned. As we have seen in Chapter 3, the assumption of a singular world has a singularising effect on the different perspectives of those involved and is ultimately imagined as a source of resolution.

Negotiating external interests Ideas about the importance of professional judgement and institutional consistency all relate to a shared ideal: that decisions about the historic environment should be based on an objectively empirical understanding of reality as distinct from individual interests or subjectively held perspectives. Historic environments are also shaped through a range of external actors, whose interests may also be at odds with the institutional aims of HS and who also constitute potential threats to objectivity. In the context of listing, Michael explains the importance of detachment from these other interests: If you’re listing, adding things to that list is an impartial kind of academic thing that’s separate to an extent from all the political and economic whirlwind that’s going on around it. The fact that it isn’t led by that, it’s just what it is […] The interest of the building is recognised purely for its value in some way and recognising what that value is might help other people to rally around it. Seeing the built environment as the materialisation of a range of competing interests, he articulates the virtues of a more “neutral” assessment of a building’s historic value: All the elements that are at play are fighting for the same piece of turf, so to speak, for different reasons. That’s kind of the rich melting pot of it all and you’re kind of separate from that and I think that’s the key to it. It remains separate from the agendas that aren’t related to the actual interest of it. Similar ideas are expressed by those involved in the process of scheduling (the form of heritage protection normally employed in relation to archaeological

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sites). The aim of identifying the objective significance of monuments entails assessment that is “unbiased” by short-term social, economic and political interest. Tim uses the example of a politically sensitive case to explain the importance of resisting the wider social and political pressures that are sometimes brought to bear. In relation to a site they decided not to schedule, he explains the rationale: We’re not saying it shouldn’t have protection. We’re not saying we can’t afford to lose it. What we’re saying is that it doesn’t meet the criteria [for scheduling] because despite the contemporary value that people put on it, particularly the correspondents who were corresponding with us about protecting it, despite that it doesn’t meet the criteria […] The challenge we’ve got is that we are being lobbied to give it protection through MSPs [Members of Scottish Parliament] and others and that’s incredibly difficult to set to one side, and deal with the evidence on its own. Critical heritage scholars have highlighted how heritage organisations are central to the constitution of the modern nation-state, specifically shaping history as “invented traditions” (Hobsbawm 1983), received historical narratives that support singular visions of the national past and frame contemporary understandings of national identity (Geismar 2015). While HS employees acknowledge the potential for complicity and compromise in the face of state interests, they often highlight the importance of evidence-based institutional “objectivity” as a way to resist contemporary political interests. Commitments to historical accuracy and truth are seen as a way to counter shorter-term politically interested and expedient versions of the past. Regionally focused casework teams oversee the day-to-day protection of buildings and monuments in relation to proposed developments that have the capacity to affect these. By contrast to the scheduling and listing teams, their focus is not on what to designate, but on how to regulate those forms of heritage already designated in this way. In these contexts, detachment from external concerns and interests is held to be impossible and indeed undesirable. James, an experienced heritage manager involved in this casework describes the negotiations that surround his work on scheduled monuments: Obviously you’re still influenced by owners […] what other people want to try and achieve, so there are different influences, different communities, different community dynamics as well – what they all want to achieve. Different communities trying to achieve different things in the same places, same resources […] You’re the mediator and the person that’s trying to seek the balance for most of those things. In practical terms, much of this work involves interacting and negotiating with interested parties including the local authorities who enforce planning decisions, developers and clients who inhabit and renovate listed buildings, and the owners

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responsible for the upkeep of scheduled monuments. In these contexts, “objectivity” is not a matter of detachment from external interests, but rather of seeking a judicious “balance” between these. In this sense understandings of objectivity as engaged neutrality are distinct from the ideal of objectivity as independence through detachment.

Detaching through practice For craftsmen and women involved in the conservation of buildings and monuments, subjectivity is a different kind of problem: their work involves material interventions that are necessary to prevent forms of decay that threaten authenticity. This work itself threatens authenticity to the extent it materialises objects from the actions of people in the present. In various ways, such interventions aim to keep things “as they are”, through disciplining subjectivity. This is commonly articulated by those involved as an antipathy to “creativity” and the celebration of the “disciplined” enactment of “craft tradition”. In the stonemason’s yard at Glasgow Cathedral, John, one of the senior masons, is carving a practice piece, “getting a feel” for a new gargoyle he will carve to replace a severely eroded original. The head’s grimacing, fantastical features draw the eye. Yet later, as we chat over mugs of tea, John is quick to deflect attention from his carving. “It’s just creating, there’s no skill in that”, he explains, nodding dismissively towards the elaborate head. By contrast, he highlights the skill involved in the deceptively simple finial one of the other masons is cutting. “That’s the real stuff”, he continues, “one hundred percent discipline. That’s pure geometry”. If a mistake is made with the gargoyle, John can easily re-work it. He demonstrates the point, chipping off a corner with his chisel before cutting back to erase the damage. “There’s no right or wrong” he emphasises. By contrast, the finial (the decorative upper termination of one of the cathedral pinnacles) exemplifies the exactitude and patience John takes to be at the heart of the craft. The skill lies in the discipline of following rules that are both the means by which a correct result is achieved and a set of standards against which it is judged: “it has to be right”. Conceptually speaking, masons start at the end. As distinct from the ideal of craft as discussed and celebrated by Tim Ingold (2007), form does not organically emerge from the process of cutting but is prefigured at the outset. Working in this way requires an imaginative capacity referred to as “the mason’s eye”. Over time, masons acquire the ability to look at an uncut stone and see in it the end point of their task. John, an experienced mason, describes this as a “second sight”, and equates it with a capacity to see “that the form is already there”. Visualising an end point, the masons then work back to plan the stages required to get to it. As craftsmen (the masons in the Cathedral yard are all male) involved in what David Pye terms “the workmanship of risk” (2010: 343) they seek to minimise the possibility that the end result diverges from this pre-figured ideal. Technical competency is celebrated as a means to correctly realise an initial plan (Chick and

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Roberts 1987; O’Neale 1932). Skilled practice is not in this sense a source of novelty and originality. Templates facilitate a process of literalisation (Turnball 1993), guiding the masons’ actions, but they do not determine the actions required to get there. Self-regulation emerges from the dynamics of skilled practice, rather than from the coherence of an external determining system (Simonden 2010). The masons work to an enduring set of principles of cutting stone that conceptually prefigure all possible contexts (described in detail in Chapter 7). Mastery of the process of cutting enables mastery of the product. If enacted correctly, the result will be the same regardless of who performs the task. Defining these principles as “rules”, masons highlight their inviolable nature claiming, “the rules never change”. Skill is located in precision of execution, in explicit distinction to creativity. “Rules” do not mechanistically determine the outcome, but elicit regulated action involving constant modification and adjustment (Ingold 2000). Different working contexts throw up different kinds of problems. Since neither the individual nor conditions in the wider environment are ever stable, problems have to be constantly solved through “intelligent attention” (Portisch 2010: 75). If cutting can lead to myopic absorption and an obsessive concern with detail, withdrawal from the process enables “distance”. The metaphor of perspective connotes a particular relationship between vision and knowledge, whereby new insights are produced by forgoing superfluous aspects of detail. Practically, masons highlight how such detachment is enabled through the temporary suspension of activity and a spatial “stepping back”. This may involve banter over mugs of tea and a smoke or reading newspapers in the mess hut. Physically disengaging from the process allows other forms of relationship to emerge, which in turn enables re-engagement with the process via the perspective that is gained. Here, perspective is not synonymous with an individual vision, and the separation thereby enacted is not between the subjective mason and his work. Rather, acknowledging that good work emerges through the underlying principles of masonry, they seek to realign their activities with these ideals. The mason walks away from himself (as a subjective individual) in order to see the problem more clearly through the objective principles of masonry. The individual subjectivity of specific masons is therefore allied to the collective traditions of the craft through the enactment of unchanging principles by the skilled practitioner. This is not simply because conservation masonry is aimed at the production of “authentic” reproductions, but more profoundly because one’s work is only recognised as good to the extent it conforms to collectively recognised principles and traditions. Theories of craft have often highlighted the “engaged” nature of skilled practice. Echoing these theories, masons recognise the absorbing nature of their work, describing how cutting acts to dissolve distinctions between otherwise distinct entities. However, masons also highlight modes of detachment that are integral components of the process. The mind, understood as external to the body, is able to monitor and correct mistakes. Perspective is also gained on problems through physical and spatial movements away from the stone, “stepping back” metaphorically as well as literally. Once

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set within the building, the connection between the mason and their work is publicly severed in the sense that the stone bears no obvious individuating marks.

Conclusion: objects in action Daston and Galison suggest that, “To be objective is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower – knowledge unmarked by prejudice or skill, fantasy or judgement, wishing or striving. Objectivity is blind sight, seeing without inference, interpretation or intelligence” (2007: 17). While such ideals have been taken up in a range of ways, they involve an understanding of the individual knower as a hindrance to knowledge. From this perspective, efforts to know better involve the suppression, separation or curtailment of individual subjectivity and engagement, though in contrast to Daston and Galison, our accounts highlight forms of objectivity that are not opposed to interpretation or intelligence. As a set of practices and understandings, objectivity has been central to heritage practice, from the nineteenth century onwards, axiomatic to the idea that protecting the past involves an empirical understanding of that past and a commitment to intervene on the basis of this knowledge. Moving beyond normative approaches to objectivity, alternatively posed as either assumed epistemic virtue (as in a range of historical and professional heritage discourses) or problem (most obviously in critical deconstructions of “authorised heritage discourse”, notably Smith 2006), this chapter highlights how these ideals are understood and practically enacted. Rather than conceptualise objectivity as a singular or given quality, our account highlights the cluster of meanings and practices oriented by this ideal. In the professional practice of a heritage agency, objectivity relates variously: to ideas about the empiricist basis of knowledge; to the need for procedure and consistency, to the bureaucratic mechanisms by which an “agency view” is achieved; to ideas about the value of expertise, detachment, and professionalism; and to forms of “detachment” enacted through the disciplined embodiment of craft “tradition”. Through this disaggregating lens of practice, we see how ideals of objectivity, themselves plural, relate to an even more diverse range of institutional practices. These commitments to an objective understanding of the past are made and manifested as techniques, habits, routines and temperaments. Our account is not inconsistent with those perspectives that have drawn attention to the role of discourses of objectivity in legitimating an “authorised” understanding of the past that institutionally silences or marginalises other perspectives (e.g. Emerick 2014; Smith 2006; Waterton 2010). Yet in highlighting a tension between expert understandings of the past and others, recent accounts have often flattened the differences and tensions that occur within this “authorised” domain (Cooper 2013). Objectivity, we argue, is not so much a powerful idea as an ideal through which power is expressed and negotiated. Even within an institution such as HS, authority is claimed and contested in relation to different understandings of which version of objectivity should take precedence, and in differential

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capacities to perform these ideals with conviction. If, as we saw in Chapter 1, there has been a general institutional shift from valuing disciplinary specialism to valuing bureaucratic procedure, the tension between these different versions of objectivity nonetheless remains in various specific negotiations. Ideals of objectivity may indeed be implicated in the speaking of expert power to other kinds of truth (themes returned to in Chapter 9) in ways that silence or marginalise other versions of the past. However, we have also seen how these ideas are invoked in attempts to foreground “objective” versions of the past that aim to counter powerful interests of politicians and others. This chapter makes evident how objectivity as ideology and as practice must be improvised (Brennies 2009) by the actors involved; how it is not simply given but is achieved through a range of specific practices. Yet in highlighting the work of those involved in creating and sustaining this ideal, we do not wish to undercut their own sense of these practices as set in motion by the artefacts, buildings, monuments and sites they are seeking to conserve. In this respect, the commitment to objectivity relates to the conservation ideals of humility and modesty (described in Chapter 2). In its various versions, objectivity is a way of constructing the self in an actively passive way, in order to understand the historic environment “on its own terms”, and in order to intervene in ways that leave authenticity intact. As these conservation professionals see it, these active and conscious forms of self-suppression enable an amplified understanding of the objective variousness of the past. If such ideals of objectivity render the individual, subjective self as an epistemic problem, we turn in the next chapter to a range of discourses that figure the “personal” lives of heritage professionals in more ambivalent terms. These include more positively expansive understandings of individual interest as a professional virtue.

5 LIFE AND WORK

Kenneth, a Heritage Manager, is middle-aged and fashionably dressed in jeans and shirt. He was originally trained as an architect and then worked for some time giving advice on affordable housing schemes. He completed a postgraduate course in architectural conservation just before he got the job at HS a couple of years ago. He now lives just outside of Edinburgh, in an area which he likes: “It has enough nice places to eat out but still has character and is a bit rough around the edges. Not all young professionals”. We travel by train along the River Clyde, a journey of an hour and a half to a site meeting with developers. Kenneth gives a running commentary on the places and buildings we pass, describing the histories by which they became what they now are. In Paisley, he points to the grand Victorian high street that slides by beneath us, describing the origins in the booming nineteenth-century textiles industry and the wealth that followed from manufacture of the world-famous Paisley print. As we make our way westwards, he gestures to lines of decaying posts on the Clyde inter-tidal mudflats, which functioned as places for storing and aging wood, brought in on boats; then, further along our journey, the traces of a middle-age settlement, the last outpost of Welsh speakers in the north. With a smile of delight, he points out a station with a very long platform, a small fraction of which remains in use today: evidence of a Victorian past when train travel happened on a much bigger scale, and of the post-industrial decline that remains pervasive on the Clyde. In his account of London tour guides, Adam Reed (2002) describes how they link time to place. Tour guides look beyond physical appearance to the processes that explain their existence. Kenneth is likewise interested in the buildings, cityscapes and landscapes we pass, seeing beyond the present and the manifestly visible, to the hidden histories they hold. Struck by the passion that animates this running commentary TY asks whether his professional interests carry over into his life outside work: “Oh, it’s a curse!”, DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-7

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he responds emphatically but smiling, partly in jest. The “curse” of this way of seeing is not only of an ever present past, a consuming set of preoccupations that can crowd out other interests but, allied to this, an inability to detach from the conservationist considerations that derive from this: “You’re always looking at buildings and thinking ‘Oh no! Why did they put that window there?’”, he exclaims in mock-horror. He is half-joking but acknowledges the more serious problem that the interest of the job can make it all-consuming. What is the relationship between the world of work and the lives people lead beyond it? How do institutional roles and identities relate to the personally specific characteristics of the individuals who hold these? Hoag and Hull propose that, “While institutions are indeed charged with carrying out tasks, they are also a life-world populated by […] people with anxieties and dreams” (2017: 6). Steven Shapin likewise questions characterisations of late modernity as “the subjugation of subjectivity to objectivity, the personal to the methodologically mechanical, the individual to the institutional, the contingent and the spontaneous to the rule of rule” (2008: 3). In challenging these rationalist depictions, he urges attention to “how and why people and their virtues matter to the making and the authority of late modern bodies of technical knowledge” (2008: 1). Inspired by ethnographic approaches to “humanise” expertise (e.g. Boyer 2005, 2008; Fechter and Hindman 2011; Miyazaki 2006; Yarrow 2019) and bureaucracy (Bear and Marthur 2015; Brown et al. 2017; Hoag and Hull 2017; Hull 2012a), this chapter sets out to explore how professional roles, responsibilities and ways of knowing relate to the lives that people lead beyond their work. As a corrective to discursive accounts that focus more narrowly on conservation bureaucracy and knowledge, the chapter highlights how conservation professionals’ identities and expertise are situated in relation to the broader lives they live. Our intention is not simply to add personal context to these more institutionally-focused critiques of heritage discourse and practice. Rather, we aim to show how institutional knowledge is shaped in relation to these more ostensibly “personal” elements of life. While inspired by the more “personal” focus of recent anthropological accounts of professional knowledge, our attention to the category of “the personal” is less analytic than ethnographic. Accordingly, we trace ethnographically how people invoke the category of the “personal”, in descriptions of their working lives. Relatedly, we explore how personal qualities, commitments and interests are seen to enable or constrain their capacities as professionals. Thus, we foreground how “personal” lives are seen to enter these professional domains in ways that may be professionally beneficial, but also potentially problematic. In particular, we highlight how vocational ideals are associated with understandings of work as something that is personally meaningful, and individually engaging. How, then, do heritage professionals understand themselves to be shaped by the jobs that they do? And how are their professional roles enabled or constrained by their lives, interests and activities outside the space that is formally circumscribed as “work”?

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Living with history TY is met by Mark, an HS field officer at the bus stop of a picturesque Borders market town. Nearing retirement, he has a white beard and is dressed in a check shirt and chinos. We drive to the supermarket to pick up a packed lunch and he starts pointing out the key historical sites of the town as he explains something of its history. As we drive to the first site for inspection, stories of his life are mixed with explanations of key historical sites we pass. Mark, an archaeologist by education, explains: “I get to see the landscape in a different way to anybody else”. His explicit contrast is with the farmers and landowners he routinely interacts with: “They spend their whole life in a place but often have no idea of the history that lies beneath their feet”. For Mark, it is this history that seems endlessly fascinating and perpetually present. As a field officer, Mark’s role is to visit scheduled monuments, assess their condition, and liaise with the various stakeholders involved in their management. While germane to his job, this way of seeing is not strictly required by the role and his level of historical expertise is untypical. Many of the other field officers have other professional backgrounds, including retired policemen and teachers. Driving onto Kelso, Mark explains its development in relation to this history: “Kelso grew up from that”, he says, gesturing between the castle we have left and our destination ahead. As houses come into view, TY asks whether we have arrived. “Well, that’s suburban Kelso I suppose”, Mark responds doubtfully. From his archaeological way of seeing, suburban houses though in the town are not really of it. Mark’s interests, training and role are distinct from Kenneth’s, but the general orientation is similar: processes and people are constantly unfolded from place, vividly evoked in various imaginative projections of who and what were once there. At Halterburn, a medieval monastic farm, he examines the site for potential destruction, commonly in the form of invasive weeds such as bracken, “poaching” by cattle, sheep tracks and rabbit burrows. As we walk, he narrates the history of the site, on which he has done some of his own research: In 1237 Alexander II witnesses a charter by Rudolf Lannane of the granting of land to Kelso. This was Yetholm Common. In the mid eighteenth-century Roy’s map marks Yetholm Common so we can identify this precisely. It’s a monastic sheep farm not typical of the kind you find in lowland Scotland. He speaks vividly, employing the present tense throughout: “You can imagine the Italian merchants coming up here to see their fleeces on the move”. Where did these interests and orientations come from? We stop for coffee and scones at what, he says, is one of his favourite places, a book shop with a tearoom, where he starts to explain: “I’ve always been interested in castles ever since I was a small child”. He recalls a time in his early childhood when the rest of the family went to the beach and he went to look at the nearest castle. A chuckle seems

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to register amusement at his own precociousness and at an enduring interest in medieval history. He explains the appeal: “prehistory is mute but in the medieval period there are words and voices”. Mark did a history degree and then an archaeology postgraduate qualification, which he completed in the 1970s. His spent most of his working life as an archaeologists at the Royal Commission (RCAHMS), taking early retirement in about 2000. A moment of epiphany: “tramping across a moor, the pounding of footsteps – thump, thump, thump – and I thought, is that it? Is that all my life is? Walking through bogs and bracken”. The decision to retire was taken partly to give him more time for caring responsibilities outside work; partly feeling his job was getting in the way of his real interests. He wanted time to pursue his ambition, to write the definitive medieval history of Scotland. In Mark’s account, a personal interest helps to explain a career trajectory. His career develops from those prior interests and gives them direction, even if he remains ambivalent about the direction his work and life have taken. If part of the attraction of his current job is in being able to pursue his archaeological interests, the general remit of the job remains in tension with his more specific and personal interest in medieval archaeology. At the top of an Iron Age hill fort, inspection completed, he explains with some sadness, “I don’t have to worry about what it all means now, I just worry about the condition”. He continues: “I’m not really a conservation man at heart. I find the archaeology interesting and I need the money”. Later, we are waiting in the car for the rain to subside and eating sandwiches. Windows are steamed-up with condensation. Rain drums hard on the roof. Mark wipes a small patch in the misted window, peers out and gestures towards the Cheviot Hills, the direction of our next inspection: “I’ve spent the last thirty years going over landscapes like this – I know the surface of Scotland! I know it all!”, he tells TY, breaking into a long silence. A working life endures as a kind of knowledge of landscape, at once intimate and universal. Mark does not use the word vocation, though the idea is implicit in much of what he describes: his work arises in his early childhood, gives expression to a profound and enduring interest, and takes that life in a particular direction. Later, he elaborates further on the relationship he has developed to the landscape of the area through this: “I’ve always been tied up with monuments and landscapes – it’s a way of life not just a job”. Within HS such vocational commitments are widely expressed, though differently inhabited. What does it mean to describe this work in these terms?

Vocation Michael is soft-spoken but speaks with a strong sense of purpose. TY interviews him in the cafeteria of the HS headquarters. After the lunchtime rush, there’s an afternoon lull. It’s often a place where people from different parts of the organisation come together to meet informally and where external colleagues and clients are received. The interview is informal and relaxed, mostly going over ground

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we have already covered during a long car journey. We begin, by asking how he came to do his current job as a listing officer. He tells us: I was interested in architecture from a young age, but I didn’t really have an opportunity to follow that up until after I left school. Then I did some work in London and found that something was drawing me towards it at that point, so I went back at the age of about 22 or 23, to do a degree in Edinburgh in Architectural History. After graduating he worked for a series of heritage organisations, mostly in the third sector: “These started off unpaid and then I ended up managing to find work in each organisation as I went along”. After a few years he successfully applied for the job at HS: I knew I wanted to work with old buildings, and look at them and assess them in a certain way, and the listed building, or the Inspectorate at that point, seemed like something that was calling to me somehow and that is what I wanted to do. It seemed to fit with my outlook on life as something that, you know, I wanted to understand and make a difference to, and kind of see how that works really. So that was always in the back of my mind right from the beginning of going back to education really. Michael describes a personally specific career trajectory, though aspects of both the content and form of this narrative are familiar from other interviews. Degrees in architectural history are common training for work in the Listing Team. Many come to HS with experience from elsewhere in the conservation sector, with backgrounds in the private or third sector. Voluntary work and periods of precarious employment are not uncommon, as a way to gain the experience on which paid jobs often depend in a highly competitive job market. Many HS employees express gratitude at having found employment in the organisation where jobs are generally secure with good salaries relative to other parts of the heritage sector. TY asks Michael if he sees this as a vocation. The response is emphatic: “Yeah, absolutely. It was that. It wasn’t just ‘oh, well I’m doing it and now I’m stuck doing this’. It was a sense of… yes, setting out to achieve that”. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery Thompson (2009) describe how zookeepers’ vocational narratives presume and seek to establish a coherent sense of self. These often involve a sense of destiny – of being led inevitably to this work. Similarly, narratives at HS often express the idea that their work in conservation arises inevitably from their own predispositions and passions, which drive them in this direction. Though not all employees see their work in these terms, Michael is by no means alone in describing his current role as an expression and realisation of personal and profound interests: The way space is and how it affects people. That’s always been an incredible driver for me and the way we interpret and relate to our surroundings.

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I think that’s… what’s interesting about a building or a space, and it’s not old buildings per se by any stretch. In many ways I prefer buildings that were going up when I was a child. I find those very interesting now. It’s not looking back necessarily, but it’s understanding how that affects me at the time, and how it affects other people. A building could be incredibly well designed but everyone can hate it, you know, working and living in it. And why? Why does that happen? […] That’s always been really interesting to me, and listing is not really that, because that’s architecture, but listing is something different. It’s kind of what’s out there in the world and then how can you recognise what’s good and what’s bad? Michael describes a sense of “calling” that is partly a matter of personal interest, of being “called” by the things that interest him. This sense of vocation also connects to a commitment to the public good, a desire to put these personal interests and talents to use (Bailey and Madden 2017; Duffy and Dik 2013). The specifics are personal, but the sentiment is more general: conservation as a “way of life” conveys the sense of personal identity, of who he is, as inextricable from a working life, or what he does. The phrase has its counterpart in another, the idea that working within conservation is “more than just a job”. Another phrase with common currency across the organisation, it conveys the idea that the work of conservation can be seen as an extension of interests that are not reducible to the transactional logic of remuneration nor to the procedural performance of a “role”. In myriad ways, this broad ideal is implicated in ideas that work in conservation justifies and orients the “personal” life beyond. More or less explicitly, it is elaborated in the connection of this work, at least ideally, to understandings of the broader moral value of the endeavour. Max Weber proposes that “the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs” (1930: 124), alluding to the modern after-life of earlier religiously inspired vocational ideals. He describes how secularised understandings of the ethical virtues of specialisation involve the idea of acting in the public interest through individuals identifying and pursuing their own innate talents. Bunderson and Thompson (2009) highlight how ideas of a “calling” remain in many contemporary professional contexts, though today the “caller” is rarely in the form of a divine being. For conservation professionals at HS, this is commonly articulated in two ways: as a commitment to the protection of the historic environment (i.e. to the intrinsic value of historic monuments and artefacts in their own right); and in relation to the broader societal benefits of doing this.

Being interested Vocational understandings of the conservation profession often invoke the idea of “interest”. Employees at HS frequently claim to find the job “interesting” and, as we have seen, highlight the interest of the job in explaining their career choice.

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Often they understand that interest in relation to prior and underlying personal dispositions that have led them to a career of this kind. Originally from Ireland, Grant works as a Heritage Manager in one of the regional teams, involved in casework relating to scheduled monuments. On one occasion, a colleague describes him as “looking like an archaeologist”, an identity which he regards as fundamental. During our interview, he talks with enthusiasm and explains his current role as an expression and continuation of a long-standing interest in the past: “I’ve always been what I’d call a historicist fundamentalist, in the sense that I have a keen interest in history”. Initially, he was trained and worked as a chemical engineer, but he describes how disillusionment quickly set in: It was very enjoyable for a while, but I suddenly realised that the only thing I was ever going to do was either continue to make sure pipe work, pumps and very large vessels worked, or I would manage people who did that, and I found that quite limiting. I did the degree because it was a guaranteed job in Ireland of the early 90s, because the petro-chemical and pharmaceutical industries were expanding so rapidly. Though chemical engineering was a secure and well-paid job, he found it personally unrewarding and sought a change of direction. He explains how he found and “fell in love” with archaeology: [I] went back as a mature student to do archaeology and history in Galway, which was a complete change of direction in many ways; then went on to do a Research Masters, again in Galway, on castles and landscapes, worked in field archaeology in Ireland for three years as a field supervisor and just got my director’s licence. Later he describes the appeal of archaeology: About halfway through the year, [the lecturer] came on and said, right folks, we’re going to talk about medieval archaeology. Medieval archaeology, I thought, fascinating! And it was. So that flipped me completely. I dug in my first year for [a] ‘one man and his dog’ [small start-up company] operation in Galway and loved it, loved everything about it. They paid me for it! Amazing, ridiculous, silly! I just fell in love with it straight away. A long-standing interest in the past led to an awakening fascination with archaeology that developed further through subsequent professional roles. He started a PhD, “which isn’t finished and isn’t ever going to be finished”. Three years in, he took a job at HS as an inspector of ancient monuments, attracted by the idea of doing a job that would be more “hands on” and “applied”:

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I’m still first and foremost a trained archaeologist but absolutely equally with that I’m a civil servant who works in the regulatory profession, but who also has the pleasure of working in an agency that has many other competing demands to balance as well. So, I like having to juggle all those balls. Grant’s work in conservation both arises from and expresses a deep and underlying personal interest in the past. The interest of the job is linked to an understanding of this as both satisfying and personally fulfilling. Isla similarly describes her work in the Collections Team as a way to fulfil an “interest”, in her case arising early in life. She tells us how this interest in archaeology developed in childhood during a trip to Pompeii. A “love for archaeology” was pursued through a degree in the discipline, then through various voluntary jobs, before she found employment at HS. She locates this interest “in the objects themselves”: I suppose it’s the sort of social history aspect to it, so I always get quite interested in the way in which the objects would have been used in the past. I’m interested in all the documentation and that, but for me, the archaeology and the prehistory, I think intrigues me, the Neolithic period… for example, up at Skara Brae, with the etchings and the drawings and the stones up there, and just the fact we don’t really know. I mean, we can have an idea, or we can have theories as to what they were for…It’s that period of history that really intrigues me, but the objects themselves, it’s the link to the people in the past that interests me the most. Interest is here formulated as an active relationship between the known and unknown – the point at which the explicable intriguingly reaches its limits (compare Ngai 2008). For some employees, an underlying interest in the past gives rise to a later concern to care for and conserve its material remains. For others, their primary interest is in conservation itself. Maria, a painting conservator, tells us: I was always interested in art. And I’ve always liked to dismantle the object and then try to put them back… trying to fix them and do these kind of things. And yeah, conservation was exactly at the time [what] I was looking for […] always interested in preserving and put everything in ‘original condition’. She puts the phrase “original condition” in implied parentheses, acknowledging the complex and contested idea of authenticity in conservation discourses. For Maria, the interest of conservation is less the past itself (how to interpret it and what it means) than the issues posed in trying to care for it. In both these preceding examples, interest takes an explicitly epistemic form: it is framed as an epistemic virtue insofar as universal solutions or once and for all appraisals are

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suspended in favour of attention to the specific qualities of cases and contexts (compare Ngai 2008: 785). As an institutionally valued quality, interest is paradoxically a general, and even generic, commitment to the specific. If interest is in this sense a way to relate to the past, HS employees also connect the “interest” of the job to their own self-development. Within the organisation, as in a range of other professional contexts (Duffy and Dik 2013; Taylor and Roth 2019), work is commonly understood as an arena of self-expression and individual fulfilment. This can be seen as professionally important and beneficial: having an interest sustains a form of commitment, a “drive”, “enthusiasm” or “motivation”, that HS employees commonly relate to an ability to do the job well. Rachel works as Head of the Listing Team. Like Isla, she describes how her interest in historic buildings arose during her childhood: When I was growing up I, certainly, had a big interest in architectural history. My mother would take us off on jaunts around the countryside looking at buildings, and then when I worked as a student at Falkland Palace as well, so you can’t fail to be immersed in that there. And, I suppose, where I grew up […] I grew up in Fife and then a trip to Edinburgh would be a day out, a big day out, and there’s so much rich heritage there, and it’s so very, very Scottish. […] It was second nature to be wandering around wonderful, picturesque coastal villages, or coming to Edinburgh, not knowing what it was at that age, but, certainly, thinking, ‘oh, okay’ […] So, it was a personal interest, but then it carried on. Like many others we talked with, Rachel traces the genesis of this historical interest to a specific set of childhood experiences – an early origin that seems intended to convey the fundamental nature of this. In a discussion of aesthetic evaluation and artistic criticism, Sianne Ngai suggests that interest has the capacity for duration and recursion […] The object we find interesting is one we tend to come back to, as if to verify that it is still interesting. To judge something interesting is thus always, potentially, to find it interesting again. (2008: 786) She describes how interest thus has a quality of “ongoingness”, a restless quest for eclectic novelty that is important for the support of long-term commitment and effort in various domains. Rachel relates childhood interests in history to her motivation and enthusiasm for her current role: I never fail to be interested in what comes across the desk. Yes, we get a lot of schools and churches, and, okay, I have slightly less enthusiasm there, but whatever I see is interesting to me, and then policy stuff, as I know more

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about it, that becomes more interesting because, I think, we could change that, or how about doing that differently, or would this be better. So, not only just getting to see interesting things, but then thinking about how could we change the way we do it, or do we need to change. A vocational commitment to the protection of the historic environment here orients a desire to improve policy in this area. Interest is not only in the specific contexts of the cases they deal with, but also in the tensions between the general and the particular as these emerge in relation to the formulation of institutional policy. In an account of animal behavioural scientists, Vinciane Despret (2004) describes how interest works as an epistemic form: If we follow carefully how some of these scientists create access to the creatures they study, the way they are moved by their subjects of interest, the way they give them a chance to be interesting and to articulate other things, we notice that the signs that define subject and object, what talks and what is talked about, subjectivity and objectivity, are redistributed in a new manner. (2004: 128) Scientific “passion”, rather than being an obstacle to knowledge in the sense of compromising objectivity, is a necessary pre-requisite for scientific understanding: Passion [….] refers neither to some parasitic supplement nor to some sweet story of love: it means to make an effort to become interested, to immerse oneself in the multitude of problems presented by a jackdaw or a goose, to grow, to experience the following of a mother, the fear of strangers. It means to care. (2004: 131) In Despret’s version of scientific knowledge, to be interested is to be open to being affected; to acknowledge that knowledge is made with these other creatures rather simply being “about” them. The subject is both the cause and the consequence of the scientists’ interest. This perspective helps to make sense of conservation professionals’ narratives of “interest”. Most broadly, we might characterise this interest, as a way of being open in relation to the specific qualities of historic sites, buildings and artefacts (in terms that link to the personal qualities and ‘pragmatic’ orientations described in Chapter 2). In Despret’s terms, such interest can be understood as an immersion in the problems of understanding and caring for the past. Just as their interests can be said to animate the past, to construct it as specific focus of knowledge and intervention, so that past is understood to be personally animating – to give their lives value and meaning in individually specific ways. Narratives of this work as

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an arena of “personal growth” and “self-fulfilment” are ways of highlighting the personally transformative nature of these professional commitments. In pursuing something of interest, through being intrigued, absorbed and challenged by the particularities of their work, they are able to “develop” as people. Interest is registered within an individual but involves attunement to those elements of the world that exceed the individual’s attempts at comprehension. Indeed, this recursive sense in which the past in its profusion ultimately eludes attempts at understanding, management and control (see Chapter 6) is precisely where the interest is located by many at HS.

Ambivalent interests Dora joined the organisation in the early 1990s and held a senior role within the Inspectorate, leaving HS shortly before our research started. She described the broader sense of purpose that she and many of her colleagues felt: There was a real sense [that] this was the body you wanted to work for, that this was the inspectorate bit of Historic Scotland, that it was this dynamic team where people were trying to make a difference. […] We had a sense of stewardship, and stewardship being for the longer-term and not just being for a bunch of academics who had an interest in this stuff. Archaeology has always had this vocation or interest in this stuff. […] You were certainly motivated by the sense that this stuff mattered. It ought to matter to people beyond us. Dora describes how her archaeological interests led her to pursue a range of activities outside her formal role within HS: We always compartmentalised our life. We weren’t paid researchers. We didn’t do research in work time. But I think, going back to when I joined what was a small Inspectorate in those days, pretty much everyone was publishing in some way and doing research in some way. […] I think work might have paid for some, but we paid for a lot [ourselves]. We certainly did this mostly in our own time. TY interviews Dora along with her long-term partner, Harry, who also worked within the Inspectorate. During the discussion, it becomes apparent that there is much they disagree on, but they both share an understanding of the value of these outside activities and interests for the professional roles they occupied. Harry explains: Actually to do our jobs and understand the significance of things and therefore act on that significance, you have to have this really big contextual knowledge, which is something you’re not going to get by your nine to five

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job. […] In my social life, which you know was the other eight hours of the day, I did a lot of reading around archaeology, so I could try and speak with some knowledge. He contrasts this vocational commitment with the focus on institutional process that began to be pervasive following the HS reforms in the 2000s (discussed in Chapters 1 and 2): They [younger colleagues] almost deliberately ignored the mind expansion you’d get from going to conferences and could see no benefit in it before. The administrators regarded attendance at conferences as merely a government-sponsored junket. There was an element of that attitude in the colleagues who said in effect, our job is to operate policy, rather than to think about it. In my later years, at coffee break it would not be about the latest book that had come out and with which we disagreed, or the latest site discovery, or the latest conference. It was more about which football team you’re going to support or what you saw on television last night. The job stopped demanding that you actively maintained your deep understanding. Talking a number of years after his retirement, Harry laments how the less vocationally oriented employees of today lack the kinds of interest in the past that used to be common. He links this to a loss of specialist knowledge: Where they’ve changed, I don’t think they’re investing their own personal resources into the knowledge [that] allows them to do the job, but what they are doing is investing in things like a mortgage earlier in their lives, family, children, and so on. From this perspective, personal interest animates expertise. Following their interests, people undertake activities beyond the formal remit of their work, which positively impact on their ability to do their job. These vocational ideals emerge in tension with discourses which elevate the importance of institutional process and emphasise a more “professional” (in the sense of procedural) understanding of the work. Brian, a younger Heritage Manager, moved to HS after many of these reforms had been instituted. We ask how he sees the relationship between his work and his life beyond. “So is it my passion?”, he reflects, “I suppose yes. Do I go and see buildings at the weekends? I suppose I do. But I don’t think that kind of blurs into my job”. When asked if he sees the job as a vocation he is ambivalent for similar reasons: “That’s a difficult one, isn’t it, the vocation…”, he pauses to reflect, before continuing: I don’t know, it depends on who I’m talking to, I suppose. Do I feel like it’s a vocation? I think that’s a very strong word and I’d probably cringe a little

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bit if somebody said that to me. A vocation: I mean do I think it’s important and interesting, yes. Do I think that this is an important thing for society…? Yes, I suppose so, but in the same way as everybody else who’s doing a job considers that important. Institutional ideals of objectivity and the bureaucratic understandings of the virtues of detachment (described in Chapter 4), both have their counterpart in understandings of life and work as distinct domains (Shapin 2008). Implied in the role of being a civil servant is the idea that “personal” interests and perspectives should be kept distinct from those of the organisation and the policies and regulations it enacts. In this sense, personal perspectives are subordinated to an ideal of the collective good relating to the idea of organisational objectivity and impartiality. In light of these ideals, employees may admit to historical enthusiasms, but are mindful of the ways these can be perceived to distort institutional priorities or compromise professional detachment. While specialist expertise continues to be needed and valued, Harry describes how the positive virtue of disciplinary interest increasingly came to be seen as a form of personal interest in the sense of “bias”: Even allowing yourself in a way to pretend that you had a certain expertise in certain areas needed a lot of that nurturing out of work. But there was always that tension that what you knew risked just being regarded as somebody who was biased, because you knew something about the subject and cared for it in whatever way you cared for it, as opposed to being a pen-pusher. Even as such vocational ideals persist, the blurring of “personal” and “professional” domains has increasingly been seen as a hindrance to the kind of knowledge that is institutionally valued. “Interest” in the positive sense of disciplinary intrigue (as discussed in the previous section), is rendered as “interest” in the sense of instrumental self-interest of a narrow, “biased” kind.

Becoming the person you are By contrast to many of the professionals based in the Edinburgh headquarters, stonemasons rarely present their job as part of a prior interest or plan. Interviewed by SJ, Angus describes how he got into it: I was sixteen years old and basically left school. So went to college, I said it was either that or I was going to get an apprenticeship, like my dad had said to me, ‘why don’t you get yourself into some sort of an apprenticeship’. He was an electrician, he was trying to get me into the heating side of things or refrigeration because there was a lot of money involved in that, so it came to that and I says, no I wasn’t really interested in that kind of side of

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things. Never heard of stonemasons in my life. So, from then on I applied to Hunter and Clark [a large commercial stone contractor] at Parkhead in Glasgow and applied for an apprenticeship with them. His apprenticeship was difficult, to the point he almost gave up: At the start, you’re just kind of labouring for the guys… but you’re watching everything from then on. Everything they done it could be the way they just sharpened their pencil, the way they just go about their way or just the tools or equipment they were using, so I mean it instantly interested. So then you started cutting stone. I mean it doesn’t come, it doesn’t just come naturally you have to work a lot at it. I mean I was falling out and getting fed-up [with it]. Masons at HS often describe “falling” or “drifting” into the trade, emphasising serendipity over choice (cf. Thiel 2007), but recognise a subsequent process of fundamental, personal transformation. Some masons are held, by disposition, to be more disciplined than others, but over time the nature of the work itself instils these qualities. Angus describes this process of personal transformation: I seemed to just take to it, I seemed to just understand it and understand what it was that they were doing and through that you gain an interest. Stonemasons it’s never just a job, especially for good ones. Good ones are hard to come by, so sort of run of the mill ones don’t seem to bother, they don’t seem to take pride in their work or whatever, it is just a job, but they’re few and far between, you know. Thus, masonry is seen as more than simply a skill. It involves profound personal commitment and frames a broader outlook on the world. John took up masonry after a series of unsatisfying menial jobs and echoes others in speaking of “getting hooked”. Masonry leads to personal development as skills learned through the trade are applied to other areas of life. Contrasting his current disposition with the misplaced arrogance of his youth, Stuart, another experienced mason working at Glasgow cathedral, suggests that it “makes you the person you are” and “teaches the right attitude”. Commitment and dedication are necessary, because masonry is a difficult skill that can only be learned over time. Stuart explains that no matter how good the teacher is, “you’ve got to have the passion in there yourself ”. John, a senior mason, develops this theme, describing the importance of commitment to the job: It just it seems to me more of a vocation […] I couldn’t contemplate a job where, I know lots of people they just hate it, it’s a means to an end. But, it’s not like that to us, you know, it’s important, You don’t have to drag yourself out to come here. It’s not a chore. We don’t have any bosses here, we

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don’t have anybody looking over our shoulder, but we’re here at half seven in the morning just [doing] all the work, they stay here the time you’re supposed to, nobody slacks here or dodges away, because it’s important and work is important. If masonry requires a certain kind of person, one who is dedicated and committed, then it is also understood to instil certain qualities that carry over into other areas of life. John reflects on the personally transformative nature of the work: You tend to find you apply your working […] ethos to generally everything you do really; absolutely. To how you run your money, to how you do other things outside, you know what I mean. It’s the application, how to apply yourself. I was saying to you before when you had a shot of cutting the stone, the most important thing is how you begin, […] it will determine how the whole thing goes and how, how it ends. You’ll be taking your time and understanding the entire thing, how you want the end thing to be and how you’re going to get there, you know. And that applies to everything. The discipline instilled through the trade carries through to a disciplined approach to other areas of life (Figure 5.1). Masonry also involves a kind of absorption that can be difficult to cut off from and is associated with satisfaction and forms of selffulfilment that give the work an “addictive” quality. John explains: Of course, absolutely [you] miss it when you’re away from it. It’s been years since I took a fortnight’s holiday. […] I don’t want to be away from work too long, I only live along the road, there’s plenty, plenty times, I come in here on Saturday and Sunday, just to plod about and cut wee bits of stone and do this and do that. It’s not a chore, it’s never a chore. For John, these strong commitments to work are an integral element of his identity, literally etched on his body through a collection of tattoos. He explains the meaning of these as he gestures to his arm: “[This is] just like a mallet and a banking matrix, like square compasses and that, the tribal thing, is fox like a Renard, a famous mason, like a French mason the fox”.

Conclusion: interests in conservation Dominic Boyer highlights a tendency, pervasive in anthropology and beyond, to understand experts as rationalist creatures of knowledge, defined by their professional identities and commitments (Boyer 2005, 2008). Against the grain of these accounts, he urges ethnographic attention to subjects of modern knowledge “as desiring, relating, doubting, contentious, affective – in other words as human subjects” (2008: 38). His call to “humanise the expert” (2008: 45) involves recognition that:

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FIGURE 5.1 

Masons at work at Glasgow Cathedral (E. Ramsey).

The expert may occupy or perform a ‘social role’ as a particular kind of ‘modern subject’, but foremost s/he is enmeshed in all the complexities anthropology acknowledges human life to entail […]. The anthropology of expertise needs to push harder in every direction to make experts not solely the creatures of expertise that the ideologies and institutions of intellectual professionalism encourage us to recognise and make visible. (2008: 45) Inspired by this focus, we have sought to make evident elements of the professional lives of conservation professionals that have previously received limited attention, particularly in accounts that focus on heritage expertise as “authorised discourse”. Our account foregrounds how heritage practitioners understand their professional lives in relation to the lives they lead beyond their work, tracing how “personal” and “professional” selves are mutually implicated. We have shown how working lives are explained in relation to a range of individually specific concerns, interests and ideologies. We have explored how personal interests are

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expressed, realised and channelled through this work, particularly in formulations of this work as a “vocation” or “calling”. Heritage professionals commonly describe how work shapes and transforms them as people, including as interests; commitments and ways of seeing that both derive from and spill over into other areas of their life. The work of conservation is therefore often seen as an arena for personal development and self-realisation. HS employees also foreground how their personal interests and capacities bear upon their professional roles. When conservation professionals identify long-standing personal interests in history and the past, they are not only explaining an individual career trajectory but also highlighting commitments, enthusiasms and forms of motivation that are integral to their ability to perform these professional roles. Even as vocational ideals have been questioned and qualified by recent institutional reforms, many employees continue to emphasise the significance of expertise and knowledge acquired through enthusiasms undertaken beyond the formal domain of “work”. HS employees therefore acknowledge the professional significance of personal interests. Our account also highlights how heritage professionals see virtue in defining their “work” as in certain respects distinct from their “life”. From an individual perspective, they may resent or resist the kind of professional absorption that can become, as one of our informants put it, a “curse”, crowding out other interests, or encroaching on domestic life. From a professional perspective, it is common to express ambivalence to the kinds of “personal interest” that may compromise professionalism, specifically as this relates to the civil service ideals of detachment, impartiality and neutrality, newly inflected and increasingly valorised in light of recent reforms. From this perspective, personal interest can be seen as a potentially problematic source of “bias”, in tension with this bureaucratic ideal of professional objectivity. As a development of Boyer’s work on expertise, we have sought to do more than “humanise the expert” in the analytic sense of foregrounding the personal and affective dimensions to this work. Rather, we have shown ethnographically how expert authority is variously upheld and undermined by the invocation of the human complexities associated with life beyond work. While this means tracing how heritage experts relate their “personal” and “professional” lives, it also shows how the separation of these domains can be ethnographically significant – how authority derives in certain respects from holding these domains apart (compare Lea 2002). Marilyn Strathern suggests that “anthropologists might wish to be analytically alert to vernacular notions of interest” (Sanchez et al. 2017: 572), including paying attention to how this “interest” is sometimes separated from “disinterest”. In this chapter, we have seen how “personal interest” in the sense of curiosity or intrigue is acknowledged as integral to institutional knowledge, and yet how personal interest can also be seen as potentially problematic, if this is understood as tantamount to acting for or on behalf of oneself. HS employees celebrate and cultivate interests in the past, acknowledging the necessarily personal nature of these interests. In turn, they stress the degree to which their work depends on the forms of commitment, concern and care engendered by

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these interests (themes we explore further in Chapter 9). At the same time, they are resistant to those forms of individualised interest that imply underlying or ulterior forms of motive that constitute potential threats to wider institutional aims and more generally, the public good. Even as individuals may disagree on where precisely the distinction lies, the positive value of an interest from the self is distinguished from the negative potential of interest for the self.

PART II

Things

6 (DIS)ORDERED THINGS

Rachel, who is in charge of designations, is discussing a project she has initiated reforming listed building records with TY. Asked if she intends to go back and revise pre-existing records, she responds jokingly, “Wouldn’t that be great! We’d have to have about a 1,000 staff to do that. No, it’ll be from this time onwards”. She continues in a more serious vein: Because there’s so many… 47,000. The team is 12 people of whom three or four are part-time, and we deal with all of Scotland. So, it’s a very, very small team to deal with hundreds of enquiries about listing proposals etc., each year. So, I’d love to go back and do that, but we can’t, not at the moment, but you never know, maybe in five years’ time, if there’s money again, we could do something. As forms of classification, listing and scheduling are a means of ordering the world and as such play a complex role in constituting conservation objects. In his work, Foucault (1970, 1982) emphasises that objects do not precede classificatory practices in a straightforward sense. Rather, they are constituted as objects of knowledge and intervention by these practices that attempt to create order out of disorder and excess. Rachel’s work is informed by an understanding that historic buildings precede the classificatory practices she is engaged in, but she is also acutely aware that they are complexly constituted by them. As we will discuss, her ideal system is underpinned by a utopian vision linked to the notion of the “universal archive” (Basu and de Jong 2016). Specifically, it is also motivated by a concern to make classificatory records more useable in terms of regulatory practices that will inform the futures of the heritage objects these records pertain to. DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-9

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There is, however, a stark sense of profusion in Rachel’s response: there are too many listed buildings, too many associated documentary records, and too many potential listed buildings. Equally, there are not enough resources in terms of money and people. The ideal of a classificatory system that creates order by documenting listed buildings in a systematic way, employing the same formal and aesthetic descriptors, cannot therefore be realised in practice. As a body of documentation, Scotland’s listed building statements will inevitably remain heterogeneous and emergent, shaping both the imagination and materialisation of specific kinds of heritage futures. In their work on profusion, Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan and Harald Fredheim suggest that: “In some ways, profusion could be said to be an inexorable condition of heritage: there is always more that could be conserved than possibly can be, at least according to current technological and space-time conditions” (2020a: 155). They argue that, in the context of profusion, an object’s future depends upon “repertoires and relativities of museum keeping and disposal” (2020a: 164). Visibility, accessibility and findability are informed by modes of classification, conservation, presentation, storage, audit and review. Associated information infrastructures – catalogues, records, reports and databases – also play a key role in attempts to manage profusion (164; also Geismar 2015; Macdonald and Morgan 2018b). Macdonald et al. show that these practices and related infrastructures inform how likely it is that certain objects will make it into the future, in what form and for how long, but also that some things just stubbornly “stick around […] not so much actively ‘kept’ as merely ‘staying put’” (2020a: 165). In this chapter, we discuss how HS employees grapple with order and disorder in contexts of profusion across a variety of domains. Drawing on Tony Bennett et al.’s (2017) study of anthropology museums, we start with a discussion of technologies of “collecting, ordering and governing”, focusing on designation as a critical point in constituting historic buildings and monuments as conservation objects within a national heritage collection. Inspired by Macdonald et al.’s work, we then turn our attention to the “profusion predicament” (2020a: 156). Taking the HS Collections as our primary focus of discussion, we explore problems arising from the profuse assemblages of portable historic objects associated with the PiCs. The documentary practices and related information infrastructures created as a means of ordering, auditing and regulating these collections are revealed to be simultaneously a means to contain them and an additional source of profusion. We show how people negotiate this profusion in specific, partial, situated ways, working towards a utopian ideal of an ordered and complete collection/archive, which is always deferred to the future. In the process, objects, documents and associated infrastructures change and flow, even as people work towards order, fixity and atemporality. In the final section of the chapter, we explore the effort involved in dealing with profusion and unmuddling things through various forms of fieldwork. Through fieldwork, people negotiate and align objects, associated records and related infrastructures with important implications for their ongoing, interconnected biographies.

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Ordering things Recounting the history of conservation, Catherine, Head of Access and Understanding in 2010, explains that: The first Ancient Monuments Act in 1882 […] gives us about fifteen monuments in Scotland, and […] very few powers. But it created the concept of guardianship, which is about the state looking after monuments that it sees as important, and it appointed our first Inspector of Ancient Monuments, General Pitt Rivers, […] who began the sort of collecting policy of what it was that was important, and for my money that bit’s interesting and important [our emphasis]. Inventories, in the form of schedules and lists, are central to the way modern states create a canon of national heritage held in trust for “the public”, itself a product of the distinctively modern idea of the public sphere (Harrison 2013a: 44). The Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 contained an initial schedule of monuments deemed to be of national importance, but also made provision for the state to purchase them or take them into guardianship. It was not until the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act 1913 that extensive scheduling providing protection for monuments on private land was introduced. The 1913 Act set the context for the concerted creation of a national heritage collection distributed across the nation (Thurley 2013: 78–79). Sometime later, the modern listing system was established by the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, leading to the creation of a similar distributed national collection of historic buildings in use. The historian Astrid Swenson has argued that nationalism was more often mobilised in the creation of state conservation than the other way round. Once state legislation was in place, explicit articulation of national sentiment became less frequent and “[p]olicy documents adopted a language of historical and technical expertise rather than outlining benefits for the nation” (2018: 57). Nevertheless, the nation is a normative frame of reference in the context of designation. Jane, a HS heritage manager, remarks on how listing is “about recognising what makes Scotland’s streets and villages and countryside special […] which isn’t the same as England and Wales”. The 345 PiCs – buildings and monuments under ownership, guardianship or direct management by the state – are in turn regarded as a kind of elite national collection. At once representative of the rest, Catherine explains that they are also “pretty special, we do have the best in Scotland and that’s great for national identity and all the rest of it”. For Catherine, access and interpretation are key to honouring the stewardship invested in HS on behalf of Scottish Ministers; in effect national heritage is expected to be part of the public sphere at the heart of the modern democratic nation-state. A considerable body of research on inscription, classification and cartography explores the ways in which they constitute people and objects from Foucauldian and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) perspectives. For instance, Breglia shows how inventory documents like the ones involved in scheduling and listing serve

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to objectify classificatory categories, but also in their use of plans and map references produce a kind of “statist cartography of heritage” (2006: 54–55). In his account of botany collecting, Bruno Latour (1999) switches attention from classification to how these practices generate networks of relationships. In doing so, he shows how plants find themselves separated, classified, documented and preserved, but also assembled and united in categories according to new logics. In this sense, listing and scheduling do not simply identify and record inherently important heritage sites awaiting recognition. Rather, they actively constitute heritage objects out of the documentary practices, materials and forms of representation that designation entails (Harrison 2013a: 28–29; also Breglia 2006). Rachel explains the meticulous procedures and significant investment of labour involved in designation, again specifically referring to listing, but echoing colleagues who deal with scheduling: So, yes, first we do a visit, and then we do more research into the subject, etc. It would come back several times to meetings. If it’s a new listing, […] we would draft up a list description, send it out for consultation with the owner, the local authority, and an independent third party. The resulting designation document has a persuasive authority associated not merely with its descriptive, legalistic genre, but also the practices that produced it (such as meetings and consultations) and the networks that are generated between the object of attention and the document which encodes it (through field visits). Yet, one aspect which is often neglected by both Foucauldian and ANT approaches is the importance of how these documentary traditions render the world real for those that produce and use them. HS heritage managers recognise the object of conservation as complexly constituted through designation documentation. They use criteria specified by Scottish Ministers and outlined in SHEP, but which nevertheless involve “professional judgement” in their application. Accordingly, as discussed in Part I, they endeavour to constrain their own partiality through professionally inculcated qualities, the cultivation of objectivity, and the organisation of knowledge through meetings. At the same time, scheduled monument and listed building records position these objects as entities that pre-exist this process of inscription. The tensions arising from these seemingly contradictory understandings of objects as both constituted by, but also prior to, designation become particularly evident when we look at the “temporalities” (Riles 2006: 18) of inventories and the heritage objects they encode. This means attending not just to their making, but also to their subsequent use, evaluation and modification. Such temporal trajectories are an explicit preoccupation for those involved in designation. For Rachel, this means that it is important that the people involved in producing designation documentation also have experience of regulatory casework:

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[B]ecause it’s not just listing buildings in isolation, and thinking, oh, that’s very interesting, great, it’s been listed. You’ve got to think about what happens afterwards. What are you listing, and what are the implications of that? So, I think, having [experience of ] both jobs is important, to understand what are you doing [our emphasis]. This future orientation attempts to project forward the consequences of distinguishing specific heritage objects for special recognition and attention (Harrison et al. 2020). The historic buildings and monuments that Rachel’s team designates will need to be regulated in the context of planning and development by HS and local authority colleagues dealing with casework. In designating a building or monument, it is therefore important to create clear designation descriptions that are suitably codified to render them useful in the regulatory process, producing effective governance. Accordingly, the creation of designation documents anticipates, as Annelise Riles puts it in relation to bureaucratic documents, “the future moments in which [they] will be received, circulated, instrumentalized and taken apart again” (2006: 18). In 2012, Rachel was working on what she described as “a completely different way of having information” that was about to go to local authorities for consultation. Explaining the context, she points out that a “very early list description might just be two lines long”, because the legislation does not specify anything beyond an address. But then, in the 80s and 90s, listing records became extremely long. Pulling up an example on her computer screen, she explains: So this is an existing list description which is really unhelpful […] You get a whole enormous blurb of architectural stuff, pretty much describing every window, and where it is, and every twiddly bit on the building, and then very little actually, saying why the building’s interesting! In contrast, the “modernising” programme she is instituting will create a new kind of building record. “We’re going to have photos, which is a massive innovation […] Let’s keep the description, the architectural bit, [but] it’ll probably be a lot shorter”. Later in the same interview, she explains how they will also add a map, but most importantly they will include “a statement of special interest” that directly speaks to the listing criteria. Rachel’s modernising programme is intended to transform listing descriptions into more usable records for the planning and consent process. This in turn is intended to support the regulatory process and produce heritage objects that can be effectively managed, because ultimately, designation is about how the state governs historic buildings and monuments, and people’s relationships to them (Breglia 2006). In this sense, it is an example of the kind of standardisation and simplification integral to the centralising and rationalising processes of the modern state (Scott 1998). Foucault, Scott and others have shown how important inscriptive practices are to the production of state power (Hull 2012b). Rachel is concerned to produce a level of “semiotic homogeneity” (Latour 1986: 20) through

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standardisation of records made up of textual and visual forms, at least across new listed building records. She is also marshalling a range of inscriptive forms into a single record – photos, maps, different kinds of textual representation (descriptive and evaluative) – to create a more convincing way of instantiating the object of conservation and mobilising resources to support certain kinds of futures. These listed building records are classic examples of Latour’s “immutable mobiles”, because in essence, what Rachel is trying to do is make these records more “presentable, readable and combinable with one another” (1986: 7). Visualisation technologies are particularly important for what Latour calls “optical consistency”, which “entails the ‘art of describing’ everything and the possibility of going from one type of visual trace to another” (1986: 10). Reinforced by their legal associations, these hybrid visual–textual inscriptions are to varying degrees immutable and mobile, allowing people (planners, heritage managers, owners) to work with conservation objects (historic buildings in this case) at a remove from them, but in ways that powerfully impact on their futures. As such, immutable mobiles serve to extend a more or less stable network of relationships over time and space, holding together otherwise disparate knowledge and information (Law and Singleton 2005: 335). However, semiotic homogeneity and immutability are difficult to achieve in practice because the relationships between documents and the objects they encode are fluid and discontinuous over time. With some 47,000 listed buildings in Scotland, Rachel faces a profusion predicament. She is also involved in creating further proliferation, because her new system will only be applied to new designations and a small proportion of old ones subject to specific case reviews. Even then it will be enacted in somewhat different ways by different actors in relation to different buildings. So, the orderliness of the collection is still rendered partial and heterogeneous, along with its governability. Similar challenges face those involved in scheduling. Tim, another heritage manager involved in designation, explains that: [S]ince the first scheduled monuments came onto the record, after 1882, there’s been a very irregular, erratic curve of additions to the record […] We currently have about 8,300 on the schedule, whereas post war, it was woefully small. Tim recounts several campaigns focused on adding monuments to the schedule; “the programme every year would be to visit several hundred monuments and out of those visits, decide for those that were nationally important, put them on the schedule”. Some of these campaigns had been area based (e.g. Aberdeenshire, Invernesshire, Shetland etc.), whereas others had been focused on types of monument (e.g. Roman temporary camps). However, Tim explains that recently: We realised that we were ploughing on regardless, and not actually thinking that all we’re causing is a bigger issue if we’re not maintaining the record.

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So, with our casework colleagues, we devised a different programme, to go back and visit existing scheduled monuments and look at them again. […] We wanted to make sure that the records were up to date, but more fundamentally, that they still were of national importance. […] We find mostly, monuments are, broadly speaking, still meeting the criteria, but in the case where their records are no good, we’ve got to do something about that, and that could be simple revision to a description, a simple map revision, or a more extensive piece of research. Evidently then, the creation of designation documents are not singular transformative events in the lives of historic buildings and monuments. There is much shuttling backwards and forwards between field visits, recording practices, classificatory technologies, regulatory documentation and statutory procedures. The problem of producing “semiotic homogeneity” (Latour 1986: 20) through standardisation of records is just one aspect. There is also the issue of amendments to legislation or the associated criteria, as well as changing documentary genres, and transformation in the material condition and understanding of monuments. These in turn lead to further inspection, re-inscription and even re-classification, including in some cases de-scheduling or de-listing. All of these practices are ultimately intended to make the primary objects of attention (historic buildings and monuments) more legible and manageable for bureaucratic and regulatory purposes (Lamprakos 2015: 232). As Bennett et al. (2017) found with museums and ethnographic objects, documentary processes involved in collecting, ordering and governing are not straightforward descriptions of built heritage objects. Equally, though, they cannot be reduced to mere discursive constructions. Instead, designation is a socio-material process involving legislation, actors and materials that give rise to specific forms of local action and interaction in particular contexts. As Michele Lamprakos argues in her ethnography of conservation in Sanaa, Yemen, “hegemony is rarely realized: such schemes involve subjects, conditions and materials that ultimately force bureaucracy to modify its methods and even its aims” (2015: 233). The documents involved in scheduling, listing and other forms of classification mediate the objects of their attention in complex ways, inscribing objects that those involved see as preceding designation. These documents also mobilise networks of actors and resources in ways that produce specific future trajectories. Yet, we have seen that whilst these “immutable mobiles” work to stabilise these networks of relations they do so in partial and contingent ways. Furthermore, maintaining their presentability, readability and combinability requires significant ongoing work by HS employees in contexts characterised by profusion.

Grappling with profusion Perhaps more than any other area, the work of the HS Collections Team exemplifies what Macdonald et al. (2020a: 156) call the “profusion predicament”. Reference to “the Collections” creates a sense of coherence out of an eclectic

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and historically rather ad hoc collection of more than 35,000 portable things that have accrued around c.150 of the PiCs.1 Defined by their relationship to historic buildings and monuments, these historic objects range from archaeological artefacts to fragments of stone that have fallen off buildings, to industrial materials, coins, militaria, ceremonial objects, maritime material culture, costumes and textiles, domestic furnishings and fine art. However, until relatively recently these objects had evaded systematic practices of classification, ordering, regulating and governing. Prior to the early 2000s, these were not things contained and controlled by documentation. Many had not even been actively or formally collected. They arrived and indeed sometimes departed PiCs as a result of various actors and agencies, for instance: different inspectors pursuing their personal interests; custodians and “work squads” (MCUs) rearranging objects at PiCs and acquiring new ones; archaeological excavations unearthing new assemblages; and the ineluctable effects of the weather on stone buildings and monuments generating an unending supply of stone fragments, which then enter the Collections as portable objects. Even during our fieldwork, some of these accumulating objects remained in an uncontained and uncontrolled state, described by those involved with them as if somehow semi-wild or feral. Unruly and disobedient, they awaited the attentions of the Collections Team, developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s when resources became available. As Lewis, the Registrar for the Collections, jokingly puts it, their work is “essential to dealing with disobedient collections and unruly colleagues”, and then with a more serious air, “what you need to control everything”. “What are the Collections? Now that’s an interesting question to ask”, muses the Head of the Collections Team in 2013. It takes Robert on a wry and philosophical biographical journey. He joined the Ancient Monuments Laboratory (Edinburgh) in 1980 with a background in archaeology and remedial conservation. For over a decade, he worked with excavated material, but in 1992 with the creation of HS, the then Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Iain MacIvor, suggested that his role should be about “stuff under glass”; an apt metaphor for what ultimately heralded the introduction of a more formal museum approach. To begin with though, it was a role that seemed to relegate him to “going from site-to-site cleaning dead flies out of glass cases!”. Dead flies proved to be one of Robert’s favourite allegories for how “the stuff that makes up collections is still misunderstood, and its needs poorly accommodated within the organisation”. In an interview with SJ in 2013, he reminisces about the challenge: [T]here was a whole world of PiCs with stuff at them […]. They were being looked after – and I use the phrase lightly – by the then inspectors of ancient monuments by their region and some inspectors were interested in objects on display, or furniture, or paintings, and others weren’t interested at all. […] I spotted a niche. And so I stayed, and I became the Collections Manager and started the process of documenting these collections.

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Many of these collections had been around for decades, he explains, and there were “listings” of objects going back to the 1930s, “big legalistic foolscap sheets […], but nothing you could actually relate to – it would say ten such and such, but where the hell were these ten such and such?”. So, Robert started a small database and went around from property to property checking the paper inventories, which he had gathered together. Whilst what Robert calls the “slightly awkward Johnny-come-lately status” of the Collections persisted, he eventually managed to build up a small, youthful Collections Team and acquire Museum Accreditation for the Collections. By 2013, when SJ conducted fieldwork with them, there were ten staff, mostly female, with professional museum or archive training, or a background in collections management. They included a registrar, a documentation officer and several regional collections managers. Accreditation had ushered in a whole set of processes including a collection development policy, formal accessioning, cataloguing, loan and disposal processes, regular collections audits, environmental monitoring, pest control and risk assessments. We focus on the Collections here because, faced with a large body of until recently poorly documented objects, it exemplifies the problem of profusion encountered in many aspects of HS work. Olivia, who oversees documentation, captures this whilst reflecting on her life and work with a sense of destiny. It is quite an overwhelming task. I think this job either was made for me, or I was made for this job, because I am used to looking at vast amounts of material, and I have trained my eyes to see, and to notice many details. For instance, when I applied for the job one of the questions was, ‘we have almost 35,000 artefacts, how will you cope recording these?’. And I said, well, one of the assemblages of fish remains that I used in my PhD had over 32,000 fish bones, and I had to look at each one of them, and record each one of them. So, if I can do that, probably I can do this too. With a serious manner and a deep sense of duty, Olivia explains her role to SJ in a careful, measured way. She deals with cataloguing the Collections associated with the PiCs. Aside from a PiC association, “each artefact has a unique identity number, which is an accession number”. And then the object has to have a description, Olivia says, gesturing towards a workaday table in the Collections Team office: So, if I have a table, the object type is more general, it could be ‘furniture’ for the table, and then there is a more extended description. So, I can say, well, ‘it’s a long table, and it has six legs’, or something like this. I also can record condition, for instance, on this table I can say, ‘there are hot marks all over the surface, and scratches over the table’, and I will say, ‘although the object is stable there is some action required’. So, there will be something in the database that will tell us that a conservator must have a look at the table.

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Olivia continues with her systematic account of what documenting the table would involve: location description, both general (site) and specific (room); dimensions, photographs (one identified as ‘primary’). “What else do we say?”, Olivia mulls, “… everything is recorded about the object”. Asked about the purpose of the documentation, she says: Well, the purpose is to make sure there will always be a record for future generations, and the record will be preserved, and in some instances the record may… how do you say… may survive, but the object may not survive, therefore, having the information about the record of the object, future generations will be able to make a replica if an object is lost for any reason. Here, as elsewhere in heritage practice, documentation is conceived as ultimately a means of preservation for posterity. Contrary to the common-sense assumption, naturalised in some analytic approaches, that materiality equals durability, the logic is reversed here. Ideas of material failure and frailty (decay, loss etc.) are counterposed with a vision of documentary records as relatively permanent. The notion of preservation by record has, of course, an established genealogy in the context of archaeological excavation, where the record anticipates and enables the destruction of the thing itself (Lucas 2012). However, it also pervades a wide range of documentary practices associated with modernity, where linguistic inscription is conceived as the means of ‘fixing’ things; making them concrete and durable (cf. Connerton 1989 on memory; Forty 2004 on modernist architecture). Here then, it becomes clear that the “immutable mobile” (Latour 1986) is not only mobile in space, but also extends a network of relationships through time, anticipating and potentially mitigating the destruction of the object itself. In the context of ethnographic collections, Bennett et al. develop the concept of “second-order” objects (2017: 37, after Jacknis 1996) to refer to the immutable mobiles (records, maps, drawings and photographs) created as a means of stabilising and controlling relations between ethnographic objects. Such an analytical distinction between first- and second-order objects partly overlaps with formulations at work amongst HS employees. They see documentation as central, but subsidiary, to “the thing itself ”, whilst at the same time being capable of standing for it in the face of loss or destruction. It is not surprising then that, as Bennett et al. (2017) show, second-order objects become an integral and often prolific part of collections, themselves in need of ordering and managing. Here infrastructures of information, “as provided by the structuring of databases, categories and metadata” (Macdonald et al. 2020a: 164), are important. Accordingly, the work of the Collections Team is informed by various standards and procedures, which Lewis, the Registrar, frequently invokes; the UK Registrar’s Group Facility Reports, UK Spectrum guidance produced by the Collections Trust and various Museum Association Guidelines. Vernon, a computerised collections management system, is the primary means of conforming to these standards in the documentation of the Collections, offering sophisticated

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tools for locating and tracking artefacts, as well as managing loans, public access, reporting and workflow management. Documentation through Vernon acts as an immutable mobile par excellence, its design being fundamentally orientated to fixing the status of both first- and second-order objects within the Collections, rendering them visible and creating order. Lewis emphasises that control is particularly important when objects move in and out of the Collections, through accessioning and de-accessioning loans. Ownership, provenance, authenticity, significance and condition are scrutinised and specified as objects cross these thresholds, defining, indeed constituting, the essence of the thing itself, as well as the care it will receive. Moreover, once an object enters Vernon various relations are recorded: its physical location is regarded as a primary relationship, but relations to other objects, places, people, texts, images, and digital ‘assets’, can all be documented and seemingly controlled. However, populating Vernon on the basis of the existing heterogenous paper records has been an enormous task for the Collections Team and is still far from complete in 2013. In their work on profusion, Macdonald et al. (2020b) note that backlogs of objects awaiting accessioning or cataloguing are commonplace in the museum sector. One curator who participated in their research “explained that ‘in 2017, 1,409 new records were created, but many of these would have been for objects that were acquired many years ago, but for which appropriate documentation had not yet been curated’” (2020b: 179–180). Many of the museum curators they worked with had cupboards and storerooms filled with such items; “cupboards of doom” as one of their interlocuters called them (2020b: 239–241). For the HS Collections Team, the challenge is less to do with “cupboards of doom” (although there were some of these), but rather that of unrecorded objects in unexplored territories, and everything from duplicate records to missing information, ominously referred to as “black holes” by those involved. As Lewis emphasises, the distributed nature of the Collections creates particular issues in respect to the museum standards they are supposed to uphold, fundamental to which is the basic question of “knowing what you’ve got”.

The work of stabilisation Documentation and related infrastructures are therefore a means to define and control conservation objects and their relationships, as Matthew Hull (2012b: 259) has shown for other domains. They are employed in the struggle to rationalise collections and to sort things out through their capacity as classificatory technologies. The role of classificatory systems and information infrastructures in disciplining things and people is widely discussed (e.g. Bowker and Star 2000), especially as regards museums (e.g. Bennett 1995; Bennett et al. 2017; Harrison 2013b), if less so in the case of built heritage. However, research focusing on the immutability created by documentary practices tends to efface the work involved; a criticism that could be levelled at critical heritage and museum studies, where

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a focus on discourse has often prevailed over detailed explorations of practice. Yet, as John Law and Vicky Singleton point out “it takes effort to sustain stable networks of relations” (2005: 337, emphasis original); and we would add, particularly so in the face of profusion. Olivia’s work on a significant military collection in the summer of 2013 provides a striking illustration of the labour involved, being what even she describes as “a little bit of a nightmare”. It contains over 900 shoe buckles, a few of which are on display, but most are boxed. Olivia explains that the buckles are in Vernon, and therefore have an accession number, but “somehow these objects have been marked with another number” derived from conservation work in the 1980s. In addition, “we have no photograph or measurements, which makes life very difficult”. Here, the limitations of the networks created by immutable mobiles, and the mutability or fluidity of objects, is exposed. Olivia is engaged in the laborious task of reinstating stable sets of relationships: linking the conservation lab numbers to the accession numbers and then photographing the buckles and making sure that they are labelled with their accession number. “I’ll show you”, Olivia says to SJ, opening up a box to reveal row after row of beautiful, lacquered eighteenth-century buckles. “They are all the same!”, she exclaims, but then she explains that actually they are not. There are about nine or ten “types” and they are handmade, so even within, say type A, they are all different in minute ways. She goes on: And then there are buckles without any labels, not even a conservation lab number inscribed on them! I put them in a box so that at the end, if I am still alive [she laughs ironically], then I will get to them. If I identify the type, I’ll give them a vacant number, but otherwise I will re-accession them. “It will be a long process”, Olivia concludes, “but we will get there in the end”. The buckles exemplify the unending nature of the work involved in stabilising networks of relations around profuse collections of objects. In talking about this work, Olivia also expresses a strong sense that it is (more than) a lifetime’s task. Contrasting her own finite life with the infinite nature of the activity, the implication is that the ideal of ‘completion’ is always deferred. Furthermore, documentation is revealed as not merely a means of stabilisation, but integral to the unfolding extended biographies of the objects themselves; part of the way they “flow” and change shape (Law and Singleton 2005: 338; see also Bennett 2013). On questioning about what she will do with the old conservation lab number on the buckles, Olivia says “we don’t remove anything because it is already part of the object”. Even if it was just a label attached with a bit of string, the number will always be part of the history of the object (and see Foster 2018 on replicas). She would make sure that the old number is entered in the database in the “other number” field and the label is put in the history file associated with the relevant PiC.

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Follow the documents Documentation thus proliferates and becomes another source of profusion. Moreover, documentary infrastructures intended to bring about order and control proliferate, introducing their own complexities. Unsurprisingly, the formal HS archive domiciled at Longmore House by no means contains all of the disparate records created within the organisation. Nevertheless, there is a sense of striving for a complete, coherent system in many of the documentary practices we have discussed. More generally, Paul Basu and Ferdinand de Jong (2016: 13) link this impetus to a utopian, archival ideal of aggregated institutional knowledge rarely realised in practice.2 In their research on colonial archives, they identify an “epistemic disobedience and uncertainty” (2016: 6), which exceeds the panoptical capacity of the archive. They also complicate archival dynamics in time and space, arguing that they involve “multidirectional flows of texts, images, embodied practices and discursive strategies” (2016: 6). This is a useful characterisation for thinking through the systems and practices involved in organising knowledge within HS. Throughout the offices of Longmore House, there is evidence of the profusion of documents. They are contained in more or less orderly ways on shelves populated by box files, ‘magazine holders’ and document organisers, in files in filing cabinets, and in trays and piles on desks. Just as there are multiple forms of inscription and very real limits to the standardisation involved, there are also manifold systems for organising, curating and storing documents. District architect, Chris, wearily explains the situation in an interview: Well, we have a problem with our files in that historically they were generated by paper information, somebody wrote a letter, someone wrote a reply to it, or someone had an idea and circulated it. [It took the form of ] a memo that we call a minute, that people then wrote comments on, or responded [to in another] minute and it was quite easily tracked as a paper system. Now we have emails to contend with. [And] what I find is that the chronological file, if we put all the emails in it, they become huge and unwieldy and impenetrable. The chances of ever finding the information would diminish. […] So, I think that there’s a danger that our files will become less usable in the future. Chris is acutely aware of the limits of the filing systems he works with to organise documentation in a meaningful way. There is talk, he says, of them moving to electronic records, but they really need a lot more structure in place. “We’re all working individually with a general structure in place”, he says, “but there’s probably no consistency as to the way we name sub-folders or what some of us keep as emails and what we don’t”. Moreover, they are all adapting and doing the best they can, which means that a lot of information rests with individuals:

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I bet if I asked an admin person to do a search across our monuments, they would have to come to speak to us, [and ask] how do you file those, where do you file those, where can I find this information? Different directorates have different forms of documentation and filing systems relating to their work, and many documents are stored locally. Chris muses on the distributed nature of this documentation from the partiality of his position within the organisation. For a given PiC, he suggests, the various files will “give different sorts of information”. He starts with Kevin, a cultural resource advisor, and then moves through the organisation, as if following an invisible thread: Kevin’s file might record a lot of the archaeological work that was done. I might be copied the report, [or] I might get an overview on my file. So, there’s probably duplicated information, but then there’s the different interests that are covered. I mean, I imagine the ancient monument files would probably document the consent process, ensuring that conditions are discharged adequately, and the project is completed satisfactory. Ours will have much more about management, you know, it might be a bull in a field that visitors have to walk through. Visitor services might have the same kind of correspondence, but it might come to us, because we’re going to negotiate with the farmer that we have the lease with, to get that resolved. So that kind of information sits on our files and that’s the type of information you think, well, once it’s resolved, should it be there forever, or is it the sort of information that probably has a finite life and could be thrown out. You know, the archivist might be interested in 50 years’ time, who the farmer was, and there was a problem with the bull, but will it have any value? Here, as elsewhere, we see the dilemmas of present documentary activities configured in relation to a future archive and its utility. Stella, a former inspector, observes that there was an institutional process for reviewing files with a view to destruction or transfer to National Records of Scotland, which was very strict about what it would accept and why. Difficult decisions in her days were passed to inspectors (now known as heritage managers), for whom such files likely represented important site and institutional history. In this sense, an imagined future configures present actions, just as those actions also shape future possibilities. Chris’s imaginative unravelling of the different kinds of files created for a PiC starts with the people responsible and the work that they do, including those involved in their future destiny and value. By contrast, Colin Hoag and Matthew Hull (2017: 26) appeal to researchers to follow the documentation itself and be attentive to its material manifestation in files, folders, offices and archives. Let us briefly do this by exploring the contents of some of the files associated with Linlithgow Palace. Erika, a stone conservator, has retrieved the Linlithgow Palace King’s Fountain box files from the records room at the South Gyle Technical

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Conservation Unit for SJ to get a sense of a much-talked-about restoration project. There are condition reports and treatment record files relating to different conservation campaigns from the 1920s and ’30s through to the major restoration project of the early 2000s. Other contents seem more eclectic and ad hoc. For instance, there is a photographic record of the work in process; a drawn record of the repairs and reconstruction; photos of herbicide field trials. Difficulties of organising and managing all the archival material emerge in the process of looking at them. There is a new or upgraded system for records management, which the administrator involved says she finds difficult to use. “We keep all our files here”, but “some will also be on file at Longmore [House] if the architect has a copy in their files”, she says. “When we start a new record, they see that on their system. […] We often get enquiries as well to see if we have any more files on a property”. They are putting the contents lists for files on the system, she explains, but they “don’t have the resources to do the back files”. Back at Longmore House, a few days later, SJ leafs through the history files for Linlithgow Palace in the Collections resource room. The first document is a printout from the Collections database, possibly used in an audit as there are ticks next to each object entry and notes adjacent to some (e.g. “removed for conservation”). Others have dimensions noted in pencil. A hand-written letter enquires about carved stone angels playing stringed keyboard instruments at the King’s Chapel, accompanied by a copy of a reply from W.N. Robertson. Then there is a series of old artefact display labels for the following: earthenware tobacco pipes, a stamped floor tile, dress sword, iron cannonball, carved stonework and decorative plaster work. Underneath these there are some architectural plans for the displays, some newspaper articles and a letter about the loan of an architectural model to Linlithgow Heritage Trust that has not been returned. The list could go on. Like the South Gyle conservation files, the history files have a haphazard feel. They evoke a feeling of intimacy, revealing of the hidden lives of conservation objects. Indeed, the documents they contain can be seen as part of an object’s messy and fluid “composite biography” (cf. Foster 2018; Foster and Jones 2019: 1, passim), reworked over time by multiple actors. For instance, the Head of Collections, Robert, reminisces about W.N. Robertson, whose letter about the musical angels turns up in one of the Linlithgow history files: he was “a talented maker”, responsible for a lot of the artefact displays they still have at PiCs. “We had all these airy-fairy academic inspectors and he was the guy that made things happen, but he was very much a backroom junior”. Such biographical details can be surfaced through the informal knowledge that inheres in a kind of complex ecology of relationships but, as Robert points out, this is easily disrupted by repeated organisational restructurings (see Chapter 1). Such organisational change can also dislocate relationships between objects and documents, but the rich, composite biographies they form can also carry forward relationships and practices that would otherwise be lost. In contrast, when the profusion of documents and files are discussed as a managerial problem, what we hear about are problems to do with duplicates and gaps

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and lack of coherence. As Law and Singleton observe, “managerialism […] finds mess intractable; indeed unknowable” (2005: 341). Accordingly, much time is spent trying to create systems that create order, clarity and coherence; one example being the subsequent introduction of a Properties in Care Asset Management System by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) in 2018, designed to provide a single live digital system to link, manage and access data relating to PiCs. From the perspective of an earlier “data moment” (Douglas-Jones et al. 2021: 9), Chris, the district architect we heard from earlier, is sceptical of such universalising data management systems: I don’t know if there is an ideal way. You can spend a lot of time sorting out the information, but I’m sure you would have to invest a huge amount of time to create a system […] And I’m sure you would still find that the stuff you put in order still had missing information, you know, that there’s still something missing from it, and that’s probably the thing you were wanting. In their gentle critique of ANT, Law and Singleton (2005: 339) argue that it became too concerned with the form of standardisation, the fixity of inscription, and the rigidities of networks created by so-called immutable mobiles. We agree and argue that similar criticisms can be applied to a great deal of work on documentation and bureaucracy, including that which embraces the sphere of heritage. Inspired by Law and Singleton, we finish by “looking at networks that are more relaxed”. These are associated with situations “where objects precisely have to adapt and change shape if they are to survive” (2005: 339). We do this by examining the role of fieldwork in “sorting things out” (Bowker and Star 2000).

“Unmuddling” through fieldwork Isla is seated in the open-plan office where the Collections Team are based, case by her side and travel documents neatly laid out on the desk in front of her. She is meeting SJ to talk about her imminent trip to the Orkney Islands and has come prepared with printouts of her schedules, meetings and projects. Excitedly, she explains that her trip will involve a number of activities, including: audits; condition appraisals; risk assessments; some interpretation and display review; and collections management. There are some PiC monuments that will receive particular attention, such as Hackness Battery on Hoy, which is still occupied by an elderly man in his 80s. There are lots of objects there, Isla explains, but it is unclear which are HS’s and which are his. Only three objects are documented. There’s excavated material there too that has not been through Treasure Trove.3 “I think it’s in a decent state”, Isla observes, “I’ve seen a photograph that Lewis took of a box”. There’s a strong sense of the collection at Hackness as territory in need of exploration, echoed in Isla’s eagerness about a visit to PiCs on Rousay: “No-one from our team has visited them before, so I’m going to scope the sites. We don’t really know what’s there”.

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Isla’s account evokes an image of an exploratory expedition and of the “field” as a site for collecting, where objects can be encountered and recorded. “I love trips to islands”, she says, as if they represent the uttermost limits of the Collections, territory that awaits discovery. In an interview after her return, Isla explains that she found some undocumented querns and a rubbing stone at Midhowe Broch, one of the Rousay PiCs: “So, I was able to identify them, take photographs, measurements that’ll be uploaded [into Vernon], so at least we will know that”. Here, the relationship between the field as a site of collecting and Latour’s (1987) laboratories as “centres of calculation” comes to mind. In their study of anthropology collections, Bennett et al. argue that “laboratories and museums are not, of course, identical. Nonetheless, both are examples of Latour’s more general concept of ‘centers of calculation’ as the loci for ordering practices for materials that are brought together from diverse locations” (2017: 25). Although the distributed nature of the HS Collections means that the objects themselves remain at Midhowe Broch, Isla has measured, photographed and described them, creating “second-order” objects, inscriptions that can be bought back from the field and subjected to practices of ordering and classification integral to their role in the production of knowledge. Furthermore, like Latour’s (1987) “centres of calculation”, Longmore House, and other HS buildings like the South Gyle Technical Conservation Unit, act as “switch points”; nodes in a network through which documents must pass to be recognised as credible sources of evidence ( Jöns 2011; Latour 1987). Cross-examined about the querns, which have probably been at Midhowe Broch for decades, Isla gives an impression of feral objects, captured in “nets”, brought to order and made visible through research and interpretation: [These] objects have tended to go under the nets all these years… I mean it’s likely that colleagues have visited and have taken images, but it’s not quite got to sort of documentation point. […] Now we can keep an eye on them, we can assess [them] just to check. […] [K]nowing they’re there, beginning to think about maybe a little bit of research […], so they can feed into interpretation. The practices enacted on such objects encountered in the field ultimately renders them visible and governable in the sense that it becomes possible to monitor, study and interpret them, in short to control them in various ways. However, the relationship is far less linear and unidirectional than this account so far implies. Indeed, most of Isla’s Orkney trip was devoted to retracing old ground: “looking back over what I’d done, any sort of auditing, measuring, that sort of thing […] Also observations about display of objects and [their] needs, probably to re-do displays”. It is necessary therefore to attend not only to the flow of records, photographs, maps and plans from the field to centres of calculation, but also to attend to counter-flows in the other direction. Here, as we shall see, documentary forms are not merely the product of actions in the field. Rather, they also set actions in

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train that require a return to the field, where they animate a range of activities that modify not only the documentary records themselves, but also the conservation objects they attend to. Returning to the field for forms of audit and review are central to the work of many of the different directorates making up HS. There are condition reviews, annual monument audits, collections audits, risk assessments, designation reviews, case work visits and so forth, all of which require journeys to the field (see Chapter 3). According to Andrea, one of the other collections managers, doing this kind of fieldwork is how they “unmuddle things” and “create order”. “It’s very easy to check”, she says, “to make sure everything is as it should be”. She is talking to SJ in the car, as they drive to Melrose and Jedburgh Abbeys in the Scottish Borders. At Jedburgh Abbey they will conduct a collection risk assessment and an audit. The two things usually go hand in hand, Andrea explains, because you need to know what’s where in order to assess risk. There is a template for the risk assessment, which takes you through the process. For the audit, the collections managers print out a report from Vernon and use that as a basis for checking objects. The report contains basic information including accession number, title, location and description, dimensions, and an image, if there is one (lots of objects have missing information and during the audit they will take record photos and make a note of missing data). Eighty-six per cent of the Jedburgh Collection is on site, Andrea explains. It is mainly made up of carved stones and architectural stone fragments, but there are also artefacts in glass cases and historic paintings and etchings of the Abbey in the visitor centre, which contains a shop and a small exhibition. Andrea announces our arrival to the HS Visitor Services staff and reiterates what we plan to do, even though she has called ahead. Good relations with monument managers and Visitor Services staff are crucial to the well-being of the collections. Andrea explains that she depends on them for information, because they have an intimate knowledge of the monument and the objects, and can therefore highlight problems. In the visitor centre exhibition, Andrea quickly sets about the risk assessment, with SJ acting as assistant. They work systematically through sections on the proforma devoted to security, intrusion, keys, entry points, deterrents. Next they move on to environmental monitoring, humidity, light etc. and, where instruments are in place, Andrea takes readings. Risk of harm from visitors and site staff are also considered, including cleaning – both techniques and substances. Insect pest traps are set and checked as a means of monitoring. Thus, a whole range of agents that might interact with, and impact on, the objects are identified and appraised. On return, Andrea will type up the risk assessment form and write a summary, pulling together key concerns that will provide a basis for action/mitigation. By contrast, the audit works as a kind of census of the objects to check if everything is in its place. It seems not. In the education/costume room, a stone vault boss fragment [JED/vb/2] is a puzzle. “Not sure where this stone is”, Andrea announces, “it’s on the database record but it’s not this one”, gesturing towards a nearby stone. She proceeds to take a photo of the stone masquerading as JED/vb/2, with a view to giving it a temporary record number. But further investigation reveals that it is

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JED/vb/2 after all and the error lies with the photograph on Vernon – an image of another stone, which had erroneously got attached to the record. A couple of other fragments also have the wrong images, throwing us off track, but after some deliberation the identity of all the stones and their association with the records is ascertained. Later, in a building devoted to stone display, Andrea finds that lots of carved architectural fragments are in need of documentary attention because the Vernon records do not have location information or images. She quickly draws a sketch plan of the space and after some detective work, linking stones with accession numbers, she annotates the plan and takes photographs to add to Vernon. The Jedburgh trip reveals the material consequences of classification and the work of enacting these schemes in relation to a world whose complexity exceeds them (Bowker and Star 2000). In their study of ethnographic collecting, Bennett et al. (2017: 25) draw on Latour’s (1987, 1990) work to stress the two-way relations between sites of collection and “centres of calculation”, which is reflected in the work that Isla and Andrea are engaged in. They carry instruments into the field with them, risk assessment proformas, Vernon reports, cameras, tape measures and so forth. These shape the work they carry out at monuments (Figure 6.1), the

FIGURE 6.1 

(S. Jones).

(Re)establishing relations between records and things during a site visit

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results of which are re-inscribed through the Vernon collections management system, creating forms of order and instigating actions that will impact on the future trajectories of the objects themselves. For Latour and Bennett et al., these practices are fundamentally oriented towards stabilising networks of relationships through acts of inscription and re-inscription, classification and re-classification; documentary practices that create immutable mobiles. However, far from being held in a stable set of relationships, our research with the HS Collections Team suggests that the objects of their attention are messy and mutable, changing shape and moving around. Other actors come into play, ranging from humidity to pests, from birds to visitors. Indeed, other HS staff from different directorates are also potential disruptive actors for the Collections; their actions informed by different interests, agendas, regimes of care and, above all, understandings of the object of conservation. It might reasonably be assumed that this indeterminacy is specific to the distributed, portable assemblages of objects that make up the HS Collections. Yet, historic buildings and monuments, it turns out, are also mutable and unstable, requiring regular attention to sustain stable networks of relations. Likewise, fieldwork is also integral to negotiating networks of relations around buildings and monuments through documentary practices. It is a domain in which documentary inscriptions and objects of conservation can be aligned and relations enacted; fitting each to the other, reading the site or artefact through prior documentation and seeing it in anticipation of what needs to be recorded. Documentary inscriptions informed by abstract principles, policies and classificatory categories are creatively adapted to the complex biographies of specific, messy objects; requiring the actors involved to engage in what Donald Schon (2013 [1983]) has called “the art of the specific case”. We illustrate this with a final ethnographic journey, where TY accompanies three heritage managers, James, Brian and Tim, to two scheduled monuments with complex biographies and casework: Camp Wood Roman Camp and Earlstoun Castle in the Scottish Borders. Arriving at Camp Wood, the bonhomie and light-hearted banter of the drive down is replaced by a serious air. “Right, what are we actually looking at?”, says Tim hurriedly looked through the case files. As with the Collections Team, there is a disjunction between the different planes on which the heritage managers work: the case laid out on paper, plans and maps, and the need to tie this context into wider policies and forms of legislation. Tim explains some of the context to TY. Excavations at Kintore Roman Camp in Aberdeenshire had revealed a level of preservation and significance not previously understood about the interior of these camps. This had prompted a re-evaluation and rationalisation of their designation to give greater weight to the significance of the interiors. The proposition for this monument is to increase the designated area in the interior, whilst excluding the existing modern buildings located within the camp, which are the subject of an active planning application. They head out into overcast, damp weather to explore the monument. Maps play a central role: Tim’s map shows the proposed area for scheduling, whereas

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James has a different set of maps including those from an archaeological evaluation. There is much discussion of these in relation to one another, a complex overlaying and inter-layering, literally and conceptually. The space being explored is partly pre-figured and inflected by these inter-textual, inter-subjective encounters. There are issues of translation between the maps and the landscape – how they relate to each other and to “reality”. The disjunctions become particularly apparent as they try to locate the external camp embankment: beating a path through thick, wet undergrowth they come across what looks like a big linear feature: “This is a pretty substantial solid bank, isn’t it?”. There is lots of discussion and cross-referencing to the maps: “Where are we, that’s the thing?”, “Is that it there?”. Then the bank is located to everybody’s satisfaction, a long linear feature clearly correlating with the line depicted: “I think that’s quite impressive!”. James agreeing, “I’m not that into Roman stuff, but yes!”. There is genuine enthusiasm and excitement. No detailed notes are taken, the point being to get what they describe as a “feel” for the site: a partly tacit sense of the issues, exceeding the way they are explicitly framed through documents. Tim annotates his base map with things to bear in mind when he comes to reconsider the development proposal and present his recommendation to others in casework meetings (see Chapter 3). All three take photographs of the monument as an aide-mémoire regarding the issues and their conversation. Photos are taken to illustrate the character of the monument requiring specific viewpoints: “if we stop here, we get a good picture of the whole monument”. They return slowly to the car, clambering over recently felled forestry land strewn with tree stumps, logs and branches, slippery in the wet, and thick with re-growth. A couple of falls prompt jokes about the risk assessment. After perhaps 45 minutes they arrive at a road, then an easy stroll back. A lay-by offers a good view of the house and of the issues to be discussed. Tim says he doesn’t think there is any doubt about the monument’s significance, but they also “have to think about the landowner” and the proposed development. Aside from considerations about the potential damage the development might cause to the archaeology, James raises concerns about the “concept of the interior of the monument” and the ability to read it as an open space. Forestry and development have already impacted on “setting” (the way this sits within the broader landscape) and he fears that the monument’s significance is being gradually undercut: “death by 1000 cuts”. Future trajectories are thus envisioned in relation to specific actions. Next, they drive to Earlstoun Castle, a scheduled early seventeenth-century Borders tower house. The Vivat Trust have taken it on and are in the process of undertaking renovation and conservation work, grant-aided by HS. As they drive up to it there are approving assessments: “Oooh, that’s lovely!”. Again, a palpable sense of delight and joy in the object of conservation. The renovation work is seen to give the building a more viable long-term future, but, in accordance with this, listing has become a more appropriate form of designation, because it will become inhabitable and occupied buildings cannot remain scheduled. An initial phase of structural work has been completed and the issue is when and how to de-schedule. The rationale for different scenarios is played out during

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a tour of the building. There is a sense of discovery and detective work; of knowledge gained through experience and vision. James had initially thought it would make sense to de-schedule now but, having seen the building, he realises that there is a lot of renovation left to do. The issue is partly to do with retaining control of standards and partly about the bureaucratic implications of de-scheduling, because the building work has scheduled monument consent. There is also discussion of what to de-schedule: would it make sense to de-schedule the building, but retain the footprint as scheduled (because of potential surviving archaeological evidence)? The monument visit raises complex dilemmas, where regulation intersects with philosophical conservation issues. Scheduling and listing are not simply classificatory practices relating to different kinds of heritage. They also reflect different senses of what is important and how best to ensure the future of a given conservation object at a specific juncture. As with the other trips discussed in this section, fieldwork can be seen to play a critical role in working out issues. At the same time, it reveals the work required to make different regulatory frameworks coincide around a context. In the process, documents shape and are shaped through these field encounters; the visit is framed by documents but also anticipates and creates other documents.

Conclusion: the dialectics of order and disorder In Kathleen Jamie’s discussion of the Surgeon’s Hall, in her book Findings, she describes rows of jars with specimens preserved in viscous, yellow fluids. This “fixing” is intended to arrest decay, ostensibly taking the body parts involved “out of time”. However, as Jamie argues “time does pass even in this fixed place” (2005: 139). Techniques of preservation, classification and display can change and so the specimens created over time reflect these temporal shifts. Later, she reflects on their temporal paradox; “nothing is truly fixed”, she writes, “I wonder what they are becoming even as they stay the same” (2005: 140). This evocation of the relationship between the timeless and the timely (time bound) speaks to one of the overarching insights of this chapter: how heritage objects and collections are necessarily in and of time (the time they are made; the times they are (re)encountered), even as conservation actors aspire to make them atemporal. “Seeing like a state” (Scott 1998) requires procedures that produce regularisation and simplification to facilitate the governance of populations and resources. The practices of collecting, classifying, ordering and mapping involved in designating and regulating heritage are an example of such processes, demarcating and rationalising historic things, making them ‘timeless’ so that they can be controlled and governed. Documentary practices play a key role in producing fixity and inscribing relationships, acting as “immutable mobiles” (Latour 1986). Yet, exploring the role of fieldwork, we have shown that the documents involved are not as immutable as they might seem and the networks of relationships they sustain are not as rigid as often proclaimed. Whilst considerable

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effort is invested in stabilisation, things still flow and change, often as a result of managing profusion. We have highlighted how profusion challenges aspirations of semiotic and formal homogeneity, associated with a coherent and totalising vision of documentary records and associated infrastructures. Whilst we think of collections as ordered, in practice they depend on specific and contingent practices, where things can proliferate, systems can get out of order, and things need sorting out (Macdonald et al. 2020a). Yet, a key insight arising from our research is that there are (ethnographically speaking) constant dialectics between order and disorder, coherence and messiness, totality and fragmentation, in which each is made evident through the other. Accordingly, the aspiration of order produces anxiety about, and awareness of, disorder. The sense of the archive or collection as universal and transcendent makes those working with collections aware of their own specificity and situatedness. Furthermore, the aspiration of totality makes them acutely aware of the partiality of what they do; that the systems they work with often fall short of the ideal of what a collection and its documentation should be (cf. Bowker and Star 2000). Looking at heritage conservation through the lens of profusion also brings into sharp focus its future-making consequences; something that runs through all heritage practice, despite a seeming preoccupation with the past (Harrison et al. 2020). Many of the practices we have discussed clearly have consequences for the future lives of the conservation objects they attend to. Yet at the same time, the ways in which heritage futures are projected and imagined has implications for current documentary practices and related infrastructures. Hence, our research reveals multi-directional flows where the envisioned future frames and shapes present actions and decisions, just as these in turn mediate future trajectories. Through their repeated attempts to re-inscribe the objects of conservation there is an implicit recognition of the ways in which documents are constitutive of certain kinds of objects, actions and futures. In short, HS actors paradoxically see their inscriptive work as responding to objects whose existence and value precedes their work, whilst at the same time recognising that their documentary practices (particularly their inventories and records) render the things they objectify amenable to specific kinds of regulation and intervention. In practice, documents become part of the unfolding biography of a conservation object; simultaneously subsidiary to it, but also capable of standing for it in the face of loss or destruction. It is unsurprising then that many of these documentary forms become “second-order” objects (Bennett et al. 2017: 37) in collections, contributing to a profusion that requires ordering and managing. A number of HS employees express frustration at documentary profusion, which they see as linked to forms of late-modern bureaucracy discussed in Chapter 1. Prompted by such concerns, Bruce, an experienced conservation architect in his late 50s, evokes an image of a vortex of paper surrounding Glasgow Cathedral and asserts that it is the role of “professionals to move all this paper around”, so that the “practical masons, who are the real fundamental base of everything, [can]

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get on and do their job”. Yet, whilst this evocative image highlights his experience of late-modern bureaucratic audit cultures (see Chapter 1), it also underplays the important work of diverse documentary practices in constituting the object of conservation. Without this work, as Law and Singleton point out in their study of liver disease, “things start to lose their shape […] They stop being the objects they were” (2005: 337). By focusing on the materialities and performativities involved in documentary practices, we have revealed the effort involved in working towards order, stability and coherence; in controlling seemingly unruly things. We have also shown how the object of conservation flows and changes shape over time. Fieldwork facilitates encounters with messy, fluid heritage objects, but it also allows them to be active agents in translating general principles into successful, locally-specific action. Crucially, tracking backwards and forwards from centres of calculation to monuments, historic buildings and object collections in the field is also where much of the invisible work involved in conservation takes place. The documentary practices that attempt to fix conservation objects in more or less stable sets of relations “are at best only the tip of the iceberg” (Law and Singleton 2005: 337) in terms of the practices involved. In the next chapter, we examine the role of embodied practice and “skilled vision” (Grasseni 2004). We do so by focusing on the conservation of a specific monument, Glasgow Cathedral, and reveal how it both changes and stays the same (cf. De Laet and Mol 2000).

Notes 1 By 2021 the Collections amounted to c.41,000 objects. 2 There are strong resonances with the nineteenth-century zeal for representative collections, including copies, and where that led to (see contributions to Codell and Hughes 2018, especially Foster 2018). 3 The legal system which safeguards portable antiquities of archaeological, historical and cultural significance found in Scotland, and enables their allocation to registered museums (including HS, and now HES, as the Collections have registered museum status). It focuses on excavated or found items, which are not otherwise owned.

7 CRAFTING AUTHENTICITY THROUGH SKILLED PRACTICE

One sunny day in August 2010, tourists approach the south door of Glasgow Cathedral, passing swathes of scaffolding. Commercial guides shepherd large groups quickly by, while other visitors pause to examine display boards explaining HS’s conservation programme. The message is one of threat and redemption: set against a history of damage and decay, state-sponsored work preserves the monument for future generations. Central to this vision is the work of the stonemasons. Ghosted medieval prints signify continuity of craftsmanship, an idea made explicit in the text: “like medieval craftsmen, today’s masons use hand tools to maintain the Cathedral”. Images of HS’s masons underscore these ideas, emphasising the skilled, painstaking nature of their craft. At the back of the Cathedral, some of this work can be seen in action, as two masons steadily remove a piece of medieval masonry from the east wall of the choir. Shielded from the tourist gaze, in the stonemason’s yard at the back of the Cathedral, two other masons and their young apprentice are at work. These scenes suggest that preserving this nationally significant, medieval building for posterity is a straightforward process. Natural and human threats have taken their toll and the building needs conserving to secure the past for the future. Some stones are so decayed or fractured that they need to be replaced wholesale. Masons, portrayed as embodiments of traditional skills, preserve the past for the benefit of future generations. Yet, as those involved acknowledge, this picture masks a complex and fraught process. The replacement of even apparently insignificant pieces of masonry is framed by national and international policies. These require careful consideration of physical condition and cultural significance, which in turn involves a range of different actors with different kinds of expertise and skilled practice. Ultimately what is at stake is the authenticity of the building and the evidence it embodies, something that, as we have seen, is fundamental to the theory and philosophy of conservation. DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-10

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As discussed in the Introduction, the central raison d’être of the modern conservation movement is to safeguard monuments for future generations. By the mid-twentieth century, minimising intervention had become a key principle, informing ways of locating the present and working with the past (see Chapters 1 and 2). Yet even minimum intervention entails modification that potentially threatens authenticity and erases evidence. Until recently, conservation theory and practice have located authenticity as an intrinsic characteristic of material fabric (Bell 2011: 225; Brajer 2011: 84; Jones 2010: 184). Its authenticity is linked to the notion that material facbric is “historic witness” to a monument’s origins and continuity through time; an idea developed by John Ruskin (Eggert 2009: 26–28). More recently, scientific techniques have been used in an attempt to verify this originality through material analysis (Clavir 2002; Villers 2004). Much is therefore at stake in any physical intervention involving the removal and replacement of material fabric. The issue for practitioners is how to retain the past that is embodied by buildings and monuments, while interventions necessary for their conservation require material change in the present (Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]). In practice, unremitting choices must be made about what can be changed or lost and what must stay the same (Pye and Sully 2007). Yet while conservation policies offer a set of universal framing principles, the values they contain radically under-determine the specific interventions that may emerge in response to any given situation. Ongoing practices of translation and mediation are therefore required, involving various forms of expertise and skilled practice. In this chapter, we explore how the paradoxes of securing the past while changing it are dealt with in the daily practices of a specific conservation project. To do so, we examine the networks of materials, actors and actions involved in the conservation of Glasgow Cathedral. In recent work on architecture, scholars drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) have challenged the idea that buildings are stable, discrete objects, arguing that they are the result of perpetual processes of making and re-making ( Jacobs and Merriman 2011; Strebel 2011; Yaneva 2008). For instance, in their study of post-war conservation and regeneration in Exeter, Malcolm Tait and Aiden While (2009) show how specific views, buildings and streets are sustained and sometimes dismantled over time. Emphasising materiality, Tim Edensor (2011) similarly highlights how practices of maintenance and repair stabilise St Anne’s Church in Manchester, while simultaneously transforming its original form and fabric. Thus, conservation is increasingly recognised as a complex process, playing an active, and at times decisive, role in the life of an object, building or monument (Pye and Sully 2007). Nevertheless, the ethnographic complexity of the practices involved in heritage conservation remains relatively poorly understood, in particular, with respect to how different forms of expertise and skill coalesce to produce specific material interventions. We therefore examine how the authenticity of Glasgow Cathedral emerges through the relational negotiation of specific forms of expert practice, as they intersect with one another, in and through specific material contexts. We extend the insights of Edensor (2011) and Tait and While (2009), by showing how

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conservation actors themselves highlight and negotiate the paradoxes and contingencies involved in the application of conservation policies. We also explore how different kinds of skilled practice interact with, shape and define the Cathedral as a heritage object. Building on a discussion of various “communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991) in the first half of the chapter, we discuss how different forms of expertise generate different practices, technologies and bodily dispositions. These are explored using Cristina Grasseni’s (2004, 2007a) concept of “skilled vision”, which is not merely a product of the gaze, but rather an embodied, trained sensoriality that characterises particular practices and “is never detached from a certain amount of multisensoriality – especially from tactility” (2004: 41). We show that different kinds of skilled vision produce the Cathedral as multiple objects of attention, associated with different kinds of materiality, inscription and visualisation (cf. Mol 2002). As a result, the Cathedral is enacted in different ways and at different scales, creating a micro-politics of conservation, which requires active negotiation within and between communities of practice.

Working out intervention In the stonemason’s yard, two masons and the young apprentice are at work (see Chapter 5, Figure 5.1). Angus is cutting a replacement for a decayed nineteenthcentury finial capping one of the gable buttresses. John is contemplating the practice head he is carving in preparation for a new gargoyle, which will replace a severely decayed, structurally compromised medieval one. Now and again, he interrupts his studied reflection to comment on the apprentice’s work, as he cuts his first ashlar indent. Their work appears self-contained, but the limits of this independence are quickly revealed. Another mason arrives in the yard and, over a late tea break, airs his frustrations over the limited extent of the work. “If that’s badly worn away, it should be replaced”, says Doug, “you’ve got big areas [of indented stringcourse] running along and then you come across one or two old ones […] Why didn’t they just [let us] replace them as well?”. Meanwhile, Ally arrives and ascends the stairs to the Monument Conservation Unit (MCU) manager’s office to clarify how far he should extend his work raking out and re-pointing cementitious mortar used in a Victorian conservation campaign. Architect’s drawings of the Cathedral highlighting areas designated for work are taped to the walls of Alek’s office. On the bookshelves are architectural guides, health and safety manuals, and reports. The extent to which the masons’ work is framed and contained by a wider network of relationships with other heritage professionals is thus revealed in the material conditions of the yard. As discussed in Chapter 6, heritage designation incorporates buildings and monuments into a national built collection, whereupon they are subjected to practices of ordering and inscription that make them amenable to regulation, management and, ultimately, governance. Being the only mainland Scottish cathedral surviving the Reformation relatively intact, Glasgow Cathedral is subject to various conservation measures, including designation as both a Category A listed

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building and a scheduled monument. Scheduling is restricted to the subsurface remains of the Cathedral, because it is an ecclesiastical building in use, whereas the listing status creates a framework for regulating any work that takes place on the above-ground structure. The Cathedral is owned by Scottish Ministers on behalf of the nation and an HS PiC. As part of this remit, HS initiated a major conservation project in 1998, which will take an estimated 30 years to complete. It consists of a comprehensive programme of maintenance and repair, including indenting (replacement) of decayed masonry and selective re-pointing (Figure 7.1). Minimum intervention is emphasised, and indenting is only recommended in cases where decaying masonry compromises structural integrity or exacerbates weathering of surrounding masonry. When we started fieldwork at Glasgow Cathedral, we were immediately directed to two documents considered fundamental to conservation planning and the justification of interventions by those involved in looking after PiCs: the statement of significance and the condition survey. Informed by the influential

FIGURE 7.1 

(S. Jones).

Stone repairs (indents) carried out by masons conserving Glasgow Cathedral

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Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 1979 [revised 1999 and 2013]), interim statements of significance had been produced for all 345 PiCs by a team of four to five inspectors in the early 2000s (later taken over by the Cultural Resources Team when it was set up in the late 2000s). Reflecting what was described to us as a purposeful shift in the management and conservation of PiCs, the statements identify what is significant about a monument by condensing complex knowledge and values into concise appraisals. In contrast, based on close visual inspection by conservation architects every five years or so, material condition is documented in extensive fastidious detail in condition surveys, accompanied by photographs and architectural drawings of specific features and elevations. Both documents effect a kind of rationalisation of the object of conservation (Lamprakos 2015: 238), albeit with very different logics and styles. Taken together they are fundamental to working out particular courses of action at a given PiC; to ensuring that interventions to address deterioration in condition prioritise what is significant about it. The Interim Statement of Cultural Significance for Glasgow Cathedral (Historic Scotland 2005a) draws on historical and archaeological evidence that allows earlier material to be differentiated from later modifications and additions. Though only fragments of the earliest phases survive, the primary significance of the Cathedral is nonetheless said to derive from the close association with St Kentigern (Mungo), the patron saint and founder of the city of Glasgow (ibid.: 5). The thirteenth-century form of the building is also attributed great significance, because of its ambitious plan and the “scale and quality of architecture” (ibid.). A particular source of significance concerns its uniqueness in having “survived the aftermath of the Reformation without major structural loss” (ibid.). Social and spiritual values are also identified, including its role as a setting for religious, artistic and civic activities, a focus of community life and a venue for national events. Significance thus emerges as a composite of intersecting values associated with diverse perspectives, which are discussed in detail in Chapter 9. For now, it is suffice to note that these values index the building’s national significance and justify state-sponsored conservation work. Assessment of the relative value of different elements of the building also facilitates prioritisation. In this case, the history of the building and its architectural contributions emerge as privileged aspects of its significance (Historic Scotland 2005a: 5–6), deemed to be intrinsic to the building (cf. Bell 2011: 225; Tait and While 2009: 723). The statement of significance thus makes various forms of evidence “readable”, whilst simultaneously elevating some over others. It provides a framework through which judgements can be formed and specific interventions negotiated in response to the physical condition of the building. In this sense, as Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan argue, it effects action “by providing a way of making decisions in the face of the genuine dilemma of there being so many possible things to choose between” (2018b: 22). The Condition Survey and Conservation Strategy for Glasgow Cathedral (Historic Scotland 2005b), by contrast, is structured by a standard table, which requires the

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precise location of the section of the building under review, a description of each architectural element, an appraisal of the condition of each element, the identification of items for discussion and an assessment of priority regarding intervention – urgent, necessary or desirable. The section addressing the East Choir Chapels, where the masons are at work, records in spare, technical prose that: Buttresses are in fair condition with only limited stone indents required to the weathered back […] Close inspection revealed very weathered string courses at exposed corner buttresses. Many of the corbels in corbel table [are] powdering (exfoliating) to a degree that little bearing left for tabling course supporting parapet. The Gargoyles at the centre of each bay display old settlement. […] Removal of heavy pollution in the form of sulphate crusts has revealed much powdering masonry at arched heads and hoodmoulds. (HS 2005b: 98) The descriptive characterisation of the state of the East Choir Chapels is accompanied by a series of images, as with the other elements of the building. There is a plan of the Cathedral with the element under discussion marked in red alongside photographs of decaying stone and a “detail of [a] corbel. Rebuilt in brick in 19th century and rendered” (HS 2005b: 97). Notwithstanding this measured, meticulous process of assessing the physical condition of the building, this is not enough in itself to licence intervention. Decisions about where and how to intervene require discussion and negotiation with heritage managers, whose consent is necessary for work on a designated building (see Chapter 1). Minimum intervention is emphasised, in accordance with conservation philosophy embedded in international instruments and national policies. Yet, while retention of evidence and authenticity is emphasised, policies must balance this overriding ideal with recognition that some changes may be unavoidable or even desirable (Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]). Accordingly, SHEP acknowledges that conservation of “historic character” has to be balanced against recognition that “everything changes, matures and decays” (Historic Scotland 2009: 5). The Condition Survey does not record decisions but rather lays out issues for discussion between the district architect and the relevant heritage manager, a process which, at the time of our fieldwork, was formalised by an internal consent process (PiCC). For the “East Chapels Exterior”, the following areas are specified for discussion and intervention: MCU [i.e. HS masons] carrying out selective repointing in lime mortar and selectively indenting corbel table stonework as has been agreed […] Reg. Eng. [Regional Engineer] has surveyed and is satisfied with the bearing of a gargoyle. (2005b: 98)

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In general, replacement of the Cathedral’s material fabric through indenting focuses on cases where decaying stone compromises structural integrity or exacerbates weathering of surrounding masonry. The project also involves removal of earlier cementitious mortar repairs and repointing with lime mortar. Whilst this is technically difficult, it is less controversial due to the harmful characteristics of the cement mortar used in the late Victorian conservation campaign and the widely held view that mortar is a sacrificial component, which requires regular renewal. It is acknowledged that the replacement of material fabric is more extensive than it would be at a ruined monument, because they are maintaining a roofed building in use with all of the demands and requirements that this implies (wear and tear, health and safety, access, etc.). Nevertheless, since authenticity is seen to be principally located in material fabric, any kind of intervention, particularly replacement of historic fabric, creates a form of jeopardy that those involved are acutely conscious of. Mitigation of this jeopardy, in part, requires the statement of significance to be mobilised. Tom, Head of the Cultural Resources Team, explains how understandings of “relative significance and relative fragility of individual components” plays a key role in this regard: [W]hat would be the point of us putting all of our very finite, limited resources into the conservation of part of the monument which is deemed to be lesser historical or archaeological or architectural [value] […] if, you know, down in this corner down here there is the fragment of the twelfthcentury origins of the monument mouldering away. Since the Cathedral’s significance is principally attributed to its medieval history, relatively greater value is often placed on medieval architectural elements, even if the entire history of the building is also valued, including major nineteenth-century modifications. Thus, when the corbels mentioned above were replaced, extensive efforts were made to distinguish the surviving medieval ones from the Victorian restorations (visualised in the Condition Survey by an accompanying photograph), so that new indents could be modelled on (some of ) the originals. Furthermore, while the overall form and design of the Victorian architectural elements are valued, greater emphasis is placed on their aesthetic aspects than their historic fabric. Susan, a conservation architect by training, makes this explicit: Some of the areas we were looking at, there was so much renewed [Victorian] stone, there was no huge cultural significance in the individual stones; it was more about making a nice smooth wall again because it needed to [be like that] as a piece of architecture. The relatively low level of historic and evidential value attributed to the Victorian fabric, in this reasoning, results in an elevation of their aesthetic value relative to historic and evidential values. Accordingly, it justifies more extensive

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replacement of the Victorian corbels, in contrast to surviving medieval elements where maintenance of historic fabric is deemed paramount. Each component of the conservation project is hence the product of a specific amalgamation of expertise regarding condition and significance. The masons’ material interventions are informed by these complex deliberations, specified in minute detail in documents and drawings and reiterated in site meetings. Photographs record evidence of deterioration and other problems. Elevation drawings detail graphically which remedial actions should be employed where. These forms of documentation and visualisation are themselves the product of specific kinds of bureaucratic practice (as discussed in Chapters 1 and 6). Yet the distilled technical descriptions that characterise the Condition Survey are also based on embodied experience of the Cathedral itself. This involves extensive close visual inspection by conservation architects from the ground and the roof, aided by binoculars, the use of a scaffold and a mobile elevated platform where possible. The personal, local and embodied nature of these practices is erased in the process of inscription, but not lost on the actors themselves who sometimes express a concern that documentation can displace more intimate or tactile relationships. As Bruce, a senior conservation architect, explains in an interview: Previously a lot of decisions were actually made on the scaffold looking at something. You know, you tap it [the stone], or you run a key across it, and you know from experience that that’s breaking down […] It makes a different noise. Or as you touch it, it just sugars off in your hand […] I think no one’s actually convinced us that when you see something like that you necessarily need to go through three pages of appraisal. Bruce’s concern that what he sees as excessive attention to documentation can distance conservation architects from the objects they are trying to understand picks up on where we left off at the end of the previous chapter: formal protocol and bureaucratic procedure involve standardisation that elides context-specific judgement and interpretation. The tension between tacit, local embodied practice and schematic inscription through use of images and text, highlighted by Bruce, can be compared with Grasseni’s (2004: 51) discussion of the tension between “‘feeling’ cows in the farming practice and ‘evaluating’ them in the panoptic space of the cattle fair”. However, it can also be seen as an important aspect of “problem setting”, as defined by Donald Schon: “a process in which interactively [practitioners] name the things to which [they] will attend and frame the context in which [they] will attend to them” (2013 [1983]: 40–41). This is necessary because, as we have discussed in earlier chapters, conservation instruments and policies necessarily underdetermine what should happen at specific sites. As one of the senior architects in HS explains: [F]inding a way to establish what’s good and what’s not is very difficult. It’s in the policies, but it’s never pinned down actually, because it’s got to be varied between different sites.

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Thus, broad conservation principles have to be translated into concrete proposals in situations where problems do not present themselves as given, but “must be constructed from the materials of problematic situations which are puzzling, troubling and uncertain” (Schon 2013 [1983]: 40). By defining significance, assessing conditions and inscribing them in a standardised form in documents, cultural resource officers and architects are able to frame conservation problems so that they appear to pin down the ends to be achieved and the means of achieving them. Heterogeneous aspects of the Cathedral are thus brought together and apparently stabilised through practices of documentation that act as “immutable mobiles” (Latour 1986), constituting the Cathedral as an object of conservation and a site of physical intervention. At the same time, heritage practitioners reinscribe their own authority by framing problems to which they are then able to provide solutions. Furthermore, in the face of increasing scrutiny and regulation (discussed in Chapter 1), texts are produced that are equipped to withstand the “assault of controversy” (Grasseni 2004: 51, after Latour 1987). This creates a micro-politics of conservation, in which some forms of expertise are given differential authority in the way that problems and solutions are framed in specific situations, something which we discuss below (see also Chapter 8). The new stone indents the masons are working on are thus a product of various forms of practice that precede and are imbricated in the impact of mallet and chisel. Yet, as revealed in Chapter 6, apparently immutable mobiles are less stable than they appear, being mobilised, contested and negotiated at various stages in the micro-politics surrounding specific interventions. Hence, as John Law and Vicky Singleton (2005: 337) argue, once we attend to specific objects and practices it becomes clear that the networks of relations created are less fixed than they might appear and there is much that escapes their means of control. Let’s consider these arguments in more depth by examining the micro-politics surrounding a particular intervention at Glasgow Cathedral.

Fabric and form “Let me just explain”, says Tom, a cultural resource officer with an archaeological background, who is recounting a debate between himself and a now-retired district architect, which took place on the scaffold at Glasgow Cathedral: His contention was that once the face had gone the rest of the stone was of no value whatsoever. […] And I argued completely the contrary. You know, to my mind the rest of the stone was still quarried in 1350, it’s still that stone that was then taken to the site, that was cut, that was taken up a rickety wooden scaffold that lots of people had probably fallen off, had been dressed, given the final dressing and placed in the mortar bed, and was an integral component, therefore of the thing itself, of the thing that we are trying to conserve. Whereas from a technical architectural conservation viewpoint, he was saying once the face of the stone […] was lost, which is

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often the case because of the erosion that’s taken place at the Cathedral, the rest of the stone has no value. So that’s it getting down to a micro-level. Their debate reiterates tensions that run through the history of conservation theory and philosophy outlined in the Introduction. Tom offers an evocative rendering of the Ruskinian notion of historic witness, in contrast to the district architect’s concern with the form and aesthetic value of the dressed surface of a piece of ashlar masonry. Questions about whether to preserve as found or restore to varying degrees play out at different scales: in this debate the question is whether to replace a specific stone; in other instances, it concerns large-scale interventions. Kevin, another cultural resource advisor, considers the fundamental issues at stake by way of a hypothetical proposal to reinstate the roof of the Great Hall at Linlithgow Palace: [T]here’s that sense that a lot of folk have of, wouldn’t it be nice to put the Great Hall back to the way it was, so [you can] see people having feasts or doing formal dancing inside. […] But I don’t have a particular desire to see the roof go back on or to recreate that, because I realise it would be a modern thing we’d be doing. We can’t put it back the way it was in the medieval period, we could only reconstruct it, you know. So personally, I quite like it the way it is. I quite like to be able to value and look after things the way that they’ve come down to us. Because they are real. If we try and reconstruct things, there’s a feeling we may not always do it right. And, it may not be quite real. Instead, Kevin explains, he can picture what the Great Hall at Linlithgow Palace was like in his mind and he tries to share that if he is taking people around: “I’ll try and paint that picture for them, get them to use their imaginations”. Ultimately, such debates are about the truth or honesty of conservation objects, in what ways they are “real”: whether their authenticity is seen to inhere in their original form, function and aesthetic characteristics; or alternatively in their material continuity over time and the way they are handed down, including decay and ruination (cf. Eggert 2009: 35). As discussed in Chapter 2, such distinctions also relate to different forms of expertise and ways of understanding the Cathedral. The way in which basic conservation tenets like minimum intervention are practically interpreted and applied are inflected by distinct perspectives arising from different forms of “skilled vision” in Grasseni’s (2004, 2007a) terms. From an architectural perspective, the principal significance of a dressed ashlar stone inheres in its aesthetic and functional contribution to the structural whole. Bruce, a senior conservation architect, highlights these ideas describing how the dressed surface contributes to “the way the eye rolls across the building” and hence “how the building works as a whole”. It also, he points out, helps rainwater run-off. By contrast, those with archaeological backgrounds in cultural resource and heritage management roles, locate authenticity in the very fabric of the stones

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and are more inclined to prioritise the retention of material over aesthetic and functional concerns. Ultimately, while these different skilled visions inspire different kinds of intervention, in practice various forms of resolution and compromise must be achieved. Thus, conservation policies, evaluations and formal processes of consent do not negate the need for informal dialogue and debate. Catherine, who was involved in the Cathedral conservation project from the start, describes the ongoing process of dialogue: At each point where we’re replacing something we stop and say: ‘Do we have to? How are we going to do it? What’s it going to look like?’. So you don’t just have the squad [of masons] involved or the architects, […] all of the skills that we bring to bear on the building actually stand on the scaffolding getting wet and cold at the same time. Accordingly, forms of expertise that are brought together in the Condition Survey and the Statement of Cultural Significance are re-activated, and also re-negotiated, in Annual Monument Audits and regular site meetings, as discussed in Chapter 3. Such documents serve to stabilise heterogeneous aspects of the Cathedral, which threaten its coherence as an authentic conservation object, but this requires ongoing effort and reworking of seemingly immutable documents in practice (see Chapter 6). The importance of “teamwork” and “dialogue”, necessary to achieving consensus, is stressed by all involved. Talking of the need for respect, actors with different forms of expertise and skill acknowledge the partiality of their own perspective. Furthermore, the physical presence of the building plays a critical role in achieving resolution. Alek, a mason and the manager of the Cathedral MCU, takes part in various on-site meetings and explains that abstract differences are frequently resolved through proximity to the Cathedral: “When you’re all looking at the problem right then, you with me, that’s it”. Being co-present allows different visions of the building to be contextually aligned, to produce a singular plan for intervention from the range of possibilities. It is not simply that the building creates a context for discussion and debate. The Cathedral is a material embodiment of different agencies with distinct temporal trajectories, including medieval and Victorian masons, representatives of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, various architects and conservation professionals. Hence interventions arise neither from the subjective actions of people in the present, nor from the objective properties of the Cathedral, but rather in the interplay between a range of people and things enjoined in a complex nexus of action. Nevertheless, the sense of jeopardy resulting from actions that raise fundamental questions about honesty and truth can make this a fraught and complex process. In cases where decaying masonry must be replaced, evidence is a crucial lynchpin, anchoring new interventions to the historical fabric and thus facilitating a transference of authenticity to the new material. Yet evidence itself is often compromised. A structurally unsound stump of a gargoyle, for which very little

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evidence survives, highlights the issues at stake. For Kevin, the notion of a reconstruction creates unease, because of the potential to confuse the evidence embodied in the building. He therefore suggests replacing what remains of the original with an uncarved block of stone (a technique advocated in Historic Scotland 2001: 21). This solution would literalise the absence of evidence, allowing future generations to “read” the building and distinguish original gargoyles from those that have been replaced. In contrast, the architects and masons proposed a reconstruction in a “sympathetic contemporary style”, arguing that this would carry forward the “long-standing tradition” whereby masons “add evidence”. Emphasising aesthetic unity again, Bruce expresses his concerns over a roughhewn block of stone: “the thought of the eye running across three [gargoyles] – a face, a face … my god! What the hell’s that? That was completely unpalatable”. Graham, also a conservation architect, conveys similar unease, suggesting that an uncarved block of stone would look like “some sort of Gaudiesque thing”, which would detract from the architectural form of a building like Glasgow Cathedral. In the solution that emerged, a senior mason carved a new gargoyle drawing on examples deemed appropriate from Glasgow and other cathedrals; a compromise that, in the words of Kevin, “uses some of the evidence” but is also “slightly a reinterpretation”. Thus, in the face of differing skilled visions and

Practice pieces for the reconstruction of decayed Gargoyles at Glasgow Cathedral (S. Jones). FIGURE 7.2 

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associated interpretations of common policy frameworks, evidence is combined with interpretation to produce a contextually specific resolution of a wider tension between material and aesthetic understandings of authenticity. Crucially, the tenuous nature of the evidence, in this case, is counterbalanced by the idea that authenticity can be accrued through the involvement of the masons, as embodiments of a living craft tradition, who can carve a new gargoyle just as “medieval masons would have” (Figure 7.2).

Craft and conservation The nineteenth-century origins of the modern conservation movement in Britain were intricately linked with the revival of craft, and specifically the Arts and Crafts Movement, in which John Ruskin and particularly William Morris were key figures. For its proponents, machine production associated with an age of industrialisation debased the maker of the object and produced commodities that were standardised, mediocre and ugly (Sennet 2009 [2008]). Craftsmanship was associated with the production of beautiful objects and was also linked to a romanticisation of rural vernacular culture symbolised by the Gothic. The conservation of old buildings went hand in hand with the preservation of traditional craft skills that were intended to reintroduce a sense of harmony and beauty in later nineteenth-century decorative arts and architecture. Morris’s Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) thus placed great importance on establishing craft guilds and colleges, as well as creating practice guides to help preserve dwindling crafts (Hassard 2009: 277–8). Traditional crafts were subsequently considered central to best practice framed by international conservation instruments, institutions and funding regimes (see Lamprakos 2015). With the establishment of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003), traditional crafts have even become the focus of conservation in themselves, seen as vestiges of a time before the centralisation and control of mass technology and globalisation (Hassard 2009). At the same time, this influential conservation instrument conceptually compartmentalises craft traditions, setting them apart from the practices, materialities and tangible manifestations of heritage they are integrally associated with (Lamprakos 2015: 23). A number of authors have discussed the ways in which artisans and craft practitioners are simultaneously marginalised and upheld as noble bearers of tradition in the modern nation-state. One of the most influential works promoting this thesis is Michael Herzfeld’s study of Greek artisans in The Body Impolitic. He argues that: Greek artisans and their apprentices are marginal; but paradoxically they are nonetheless upheld by the state as exemplars of national virtue and tradition. Craft production in Greece is very much part of a nationalized and commodified folklore, associated with the emergence of national consciousness and glorified as the repository of ancient skills and qualities. (2004: 4–5)

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Craft practitioners gain capital through appeals to “tradition” and “locality”, but this ultimately reinscribes their position of marginality, Herzfeld argues, as those whose competence is specifically local. In studies of construction (Marchand 2001) and heritage conservation (Lamprakos 2015; Marchand 2009), similar arguments have been advanced; specifically that the situated and local character of traditional building skills are transformed and marginalised by the managerial knowledge produced by the professions of architecture and conservation, even whilst the importance of traditional crafts is affirmed. Most of these studies focus on parts of the world where modernity is portrayed as a latecomer. Even Greece is often positioned at the margins of Europe, caught between past and present (Herzfeld 1988). Michele Lamprakos (2015) in particular argues that conservators, architects and Ustas (traditional master builders) in Yemen are engaged in an ongoing struggle, because the former two professions have yet to consolidate an elevated position in a country that came relatively late to modernity. She offers a fascinating account of the frictions that result, but inadvertently perpetuates an unhelpful dualism between “Western” and “nonWestern” approaches to heritage, loosely aligned with notions of modern heritage conservation and pre-modern building practices. Our own research with the HS stonemasons at Glasgow Cathedral undercuts this opposition, illustrating that similar tensions and negotiations persist in what would be regarded as a wholly “Western” context at the heart of the modern conservation movement. The importance of masons as bearers of traditional building skills was continually affirmed by our ethnographic participants, even while the discourses deployed situate them as both endangered and localised. For instance, Susan, a conservation architect, claims that masons embody a “folk memory”, implying they are bearers of pre-modern forms of knowledge regarding traditional building techniques. She also expresses a concern that documentation can displace or marginalise what she sees as the masons’ more intimate knowledge: “we’re not leaving them leeway to make things, because we’ve had to document it’ll be this stone, it’ll be that big and we’ll be using this mortar mix and you’ll be doing it like that”. Graham, the district architect for the Cathedral, provides a different slant, emphasising the situated and local character of the masons’ practice: It’s the craft culture that’s moulded by the materials, the weather, the place. Genius loci, you know, I think that’s something the crafts really preserve […] Not many left, but that’s why it’s so important. Reflecting this vernacular view of craft, heritage professionals see stonemasonry and other crafts as living traditions embodying the essence of specific places and their material conditions. Drawing on these ideas, they also echo earlier concerns about the loss of traditional building skills and stress the threats posed by technological and commercial changes in the building industry. In response, HS, and its successor Historic Environment Scotland (HES), seek to preserve “traditional building crafts” through practical handbooks, apprenticeships, public displays and short courses.1

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In part, discourses of modernist disenchantment, and the corresponding celebration of tradition, also inform masons’ own understandings of their work. They stress the “traditional” nature of masonry and articulate a sense of temporal continuity through unchanging practice. Doug, a mason who has worked on the Cathedral for over a decade, explains that masonry has “been for thousands of years the exact same – it’s just a process, the same process that’s been from the medieval [period] to what it is today”. The work is informed by a strong sense of connection to previous generations of masons and how skilled practices bind masons to their predecessors (cf. Keller and Keller 1996; Sennett 2009 [2008]). John, another experienced mason, describes how this sets up an uncanny relationship with the medieval masons who built the Cathedral: “It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you know, when you realise that you’re part of an unbroken chain that just doesn’t change”.

Skilled vision and the practice of stonemasonry At Glasgow Cathedral, a team of seven stonemasons makes up the core of the MCU. Five work primarily as “banker” masons, cutting new stone indents in the yard. Others principally work on removal of decayed stone, repointing and “fixing” newly cut stones in the building. Fixing replacement stones in the building is understood as a crucial but less skilled activity. It depends on rule-of-thumb knowledge of the action of forces and loads, pointing using lime mortar, and an understanding of the hydraulic processes by which buildings take in water and “breathe”. Socially, masons characterise the yard in terms of unity and equality, highlighting the lack of sectarian sentiment that is widespread amongst other trades in Glasgow. Unity, however, is undercut by a pecking order that relates personal reputation to relative differences in skill, experience, temperament and character (see Chapter 2). Most masons have served three-year apprenticeships, usually undertaken shortly after leaving school. While these combine formal education at colleges with practical training on the job, masons attach particular importance to learning by doing. Through apprenticeships, they form lasting friendships and acquire a strong sense of community that extends beyond specific sites of work (cf. Lave and Wenger 1991). Robbie, the apprentice at Glasgow Cathedral is 17 years old, with a fashionable asymmetric haircut and youthful confidence. Both draw the other masons’ scorn. Though they treat “the boy” with avuncular care, he is the butt of jokes. There is one in particular that they like to tell on site: “Hey what do you know? Stone’s been cut the same way for 1500 years, but Robbie’s found a new way!”. It always gets a laugh. The point, as John explains, is that stone can only be cut one way; there are no new ways, only the right and the wrong way. The joke underscores the idea that cutting stone involves learning a set of enduring principles and practices that masons locate in a long tradition. As John, a senior mason, asserts in reference to medieval masons: “The way they done it, is the way we do it.” Claiming that “stone is stone”, he underlines the unchanging nature of

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the craft, seeing his own work as part of an “unbroken chain” going back to the Egyptians. The authenticity or truth of the practice of masonry thus inheres in a profound sense of connection, repeating the same actions over time, but it is also located in ways of seeing and acting, which allow masons to produce interventions that are “right” and “true”. This chain of tradition is produced through practices that reiterate an inviolable set of principles regardless of the type of stone they are working with. At the Cathedral, the masons work with Callalo and Dunstone stones, which have been carefully sourced to match the characteristics of the original. Yet, whilst they acknowledge the different properties of these two stones and the adjustments required to work them, this does not alter the principles of cutting, which conceptually prefigure all possible contexts. A new indent must be cut and fixed with the bedding plane lying horizontal. Masons stress the importance of “starting right”. After the stone is squared off, cutting begins with the mallet point, making parallel grooves on the surface. This makes ridges that are knocked out using a toothcomb before finally the stone is flattened off with the chisel. These techniques are utilised to shape the stone using two basic principles: “checks” create a right-angled indent, while “splays” are diagonal incisions across right-angled edges. Surplus stone is taken down through repeated use of these principles until the final form is revealed. This set of rules is held to underpin all masonry. Angus makes this point explicit while explaining these ideas: “Masonry is incredibly simple. I’m teaching you everything there is to know”. The application of finite rules enables the generation of infinite formal possibility. As Angus puts it, “There’s nothing you can’t cut using these principles”. Yet, if knowing the principles is held to be easy, acquiring the skill to apply them is an un-ending task, a “lifetime’s learning” (see Chapter 5). In part, this is because historic buildings are irregular and constantly throw up new challenges. It is also because, as discussed in Chapter 2, sticking to these principles requires the acquisition of various personal traits, including humility and patience (see also Marchand 2001). Fixing, the act of inserting new indents of stone in the building, also involves adherence to enduring principles concerning the forces at work in the relationships between architectural elements. Ally, the main fixer mason, explains, “[Y]ou’ve got to keep thinking loads all the time”. Through calculating how “side” and “down loads” are affected by the removal and replacement of stone, he calculates what needs supporting or pinning. Fixing also requires that stones are “plumb” and “level”. These understandings become part of an instinctive and natural way of looking that is central to achieving a “true” repair. Even pointing entails forms of skilled practice, partly circumscribed by the results of scientific investigations. Based on chemical analysis of original materials, lime mortar recipes are produced, which replicate the hydraulic and aesthetic characteristics of the medieval mortar and allow the building to “breathe”. Pointing takes place in stretches to prevent discrepancies in colour and help the mortar blend in. As the material “cures”, it is brushed and washed to prevent cracking and crusting. The

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skill of such practices lies in the ability to elicit specific material and aesthetic potentialities latent in the substances that are combined. The particularity of the masons skilled vision can be further illustrated by what they call the “mason’s eye”; an imaginative capacity to look at uncut stone and see in it the endpoint of their task, such as the form of a finial or a piece of window moulding. John describes this as a kind of “second sight” and equates it with a capacity to see “that the form is already there” as if waiting to be brought forth. Thus, form does not organically emerge from the process of cutting but is prefigured at the outset (contra Ingold 2007). Visualising the endpoint, the masons then work back to plan the stages required to get to it. As craftsmen involved in what David Pye (1968) terms “the workmanship of risk”, they seek to minimise deviation from this prefigured ideal form. Technical competency is celebrated as a means to realise correctly an initial plan (Chick and Roberts 1987). Templates facilitate a process of literalisation (Turnball 1993), guiding masons’ actions, but they do not determine the actions required to get there. Self-regulation emerges from the dynamics of embodied skilled practice, rather than from the coherence of an external determining system (Ingold 2000; Simonden 2010). According to Grasseni, “Specific sensibilities and capacities […] are engendered through the active socialisation of apprentices into structured and shared contexts of practice”. In this way, they learn to exercise their senses in “a skilful, convergent and socially recognised way” (2004: 48). Furthermore, the education of attention and process of enskillment can be a life-long process of learning in a “community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991), such that the dispositions produced infuse many aspects of life, as discussed in Chapter 5. Masons cultivate specific values and dispositions in order to cut stone correctly and consistently. Importantly, this is not just about learning a set of principles and skills, but also about acquiring the personal qualities necessary to embody and apply these (cf. Marchand 2009). In this sense, as Grasseni evocatively puts it, “skilled vision” is: a perceptive hue that once acquired cannot be bracketed off or exchanged for another (not without further training, at least). However, localised and historical, it becomes permanent sediment, an embodied way of accessing the world and of managing it. (2004: 45)

Negotiating authenticity In contrast to the heritage professionals that work for HS, masons do not talk explicitly about authenticity. Yet semantic relationships are set up through the ideas of honesty and truth that inform their work. For masons, a repair is honest where it conforms to the principles of masonry. Angus, one of the banker masons, recounts an apocryphal story that illustrates this idea. An “old school” mason had been asked to build a wall to fill a gap between two older walls. “So he built up his wall, his was true, right plumbed in, bang on, plumbed. And the

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gaffer came down and said, ‘oh what’s happened here?’, because the two existing walls at the either side were away back”. The boss asked him to rebuild it, but the mason refused: “you’re asking me to do it wrong”, he said, “and a stonemason is only true as his square”. Because of its irregular qualities, the Cathedral poses similar dilemmas for the masons, who frequently have to reconcile the truth of their principles, with the vagaries of the existing structure. Decisions have to be made as to whether replacement stone should be “sweetened in” with the existing structure, or “honestly” repaired according to the principles of masonry. Shared understandings of the principles of authenticity and minimum intervention frame differences of perspective with respect to specific contexts. Among the masons, differences sometimes emerge between those with greater conservation training who often emphasise “sensitivity” to the building and “sweetening in”, and those originally trained in commercial contexts. More commonly, the masons’ collective desire to produce “honest” and “true” repairs runs up against curatorial perspectives, expressed most strongly by members of the HS Cultural Resource Team, whose overriding concern to preserve historic fabric leads to a stricter interpretation of minimum intervention. Such differences of approach arise more fundamentally in different ways of relating to the building and its temporality. While the logic of “conserve as found” ultimately seeks to extract historic monuments from temporal processes, conservation practices themselves ensure that they continue to change and develop, acquiring new meanings and values as they do so. This paradox frames the debates surrounding particular conservation problems, which in turn are partly inflected by different traditions of expert practice. Though stonemasons and architects relate to the Cathedral in qualitatively different ways, both situate themselves as part of its history, viewing their work as part of a longer process of construction and repair. One mason proudly explains, “[W]hat we do will be history”. Bruce, one of the senior architects, similarly stresses the “warming” sense of “being part of a tradition”. Here, continuity of practice is related to a notion that intervention itself remains a constant, and thus authentic, aspect of the building’s life. At times this vision is at odds with those who play a curatorial role and seek to define and stabilise significance. Tom, Head of the Cultural Resources Team, suggests that “history should stop with [buildings] coming into care” and ruined monuments, in particular, are “not places we can add to”. In turn, Tom and his colleagues deal with the paradox of intervention by situating their own work outside of history, in contrast to the masons and architects who see their labour as part of the flow of time (compare Herzfeld 1991). Different visions of authenticity and time also intersect with issues surrounding the use of tools (Yarrow and Jones 2014). The mechanisation of production has been integral to debates about conservation since the nineteenth century. For Ruskin and Morris, the mechanical age destroyed the intimate relationship between the artisan or craftsman and their work (Sennett 2009 [2008]: 108– 109). Equally, it undermined the naturalistic qualities, rough-hewn beauty and noble character of the craftsman’s work, which in their eyes could be found in an

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idealised form in the great medieval Gothic buildings (ibid.). Tools remain a potent source of anxiety today, intersecting with differing conceptions of authenticity. Conservation architects and archaeologists in HS stress that hand tools offer a traditional finish, alluding to the kind of naturalistic qualities that Ruskin so desired. Their ideas also resonate with Romantic ideals, seeing hand tools as a source of continuity and the basis of a living tradition. Masons articulate similar concerns, equating hand tools with a slower, more patient way of working, symbolic of the essence of stonemasonry. This understanding sets up an implicit hierarchy of practice: while power tools, such as saws, drills and grinders, are used in preparatory work, such as “roughing out” stone, they are practically and conceptually separated from the end result. John, an experienced banker mason, explains that grinders are “just there to take down the weight… everything is done by chisel at the end”. The desire to separate machines from work incorporated into the building echoes the concerns of Morris and Ruskin. Yet, masons do not consider power tools to be inauthentic per se. Emphasising continuity through change, they stress that medieval masons also worked with “the best available tools”. At issue is the capacity of different tools to extend or alternatively curtail the principles masons place at the heart of their craft. As such masons are critical of what they see as a misplaced reification of hand tools as signifiers of authentic tradition by others. For the masons, notions of “honesty” and “truth” ultimately depend upon adherence to the enduring principles of stonemasonry. These principles tie the masons into a tradition, which, in their view, allows them to add to the building in an authentic manner, their labour becoming part of its history. Inevitably this understanding runs up against the notion of the building as evidence, or historical document, extracted from time. Indeed, it activates the central paradox at the heart of conservation: how to keep something essentially the same while changing it. Much effort is devoted to resolving the resulting tensions, ranging from moderation of the masons’ enthusiasm for intervention, to the marshalling of evidence and exhaustive documentation of new work. Self-documenting techniques, such as the use of date marks and different kinds of finish, can also play a role in curatorial terms. These have a venerable place in the history of conservation, being closely associated with the philosophy expounded by William Morris’s SPAB, and their principal purpose is to ensure readability by differentiating new work from historical material (see Figure 2.2). Thus, while the practices of stonemasonry are oriented towards producing authenticity through continuity between past, present and future, conservation policies and associated practices apparently seek to extract the current conservation project from the stream of time.

Conclusion: working with multiplicity In this chapter, we began with the wider discourses and conservation instruments associated with the Cathedral and its conservation and subsequently explored the skilled practices and embodied dispositions through which they are enacted. It

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would be easy to align the discursive inscription and visualisation of conservation at the Cathedral with forms of bureaucratic management set at a distance from the building, in contrast to more “honest” forms of embodied craft practice associated with the masons. Such an opposition would be in keeping with recent trends in critical heritage studies, and indeed, studies of craft practice (e.g. Herzfeld 2004; Sennett 2009 [2008]; and see Yarrow and Jones 2014 for a critique). By contrast, instead of reading a finished heritage product as an outcome of policy, we have taken up Macdonald’s (2009: 118) argument that researchers need to attend to “the multiple, heterogeneous and highly specific actions and techniques that are involved in maintaining heritage”. In doing so, we have revealed how abstract inscription and associated forms of disengagement coexist with skilled, embodied and emplaced practice within and across the various communities of practice we discuss. Tracing the different forms of expertise that mediate heritage conservation shows that there are different views of the building, but more profoundly there are also different ways of enacting the Cathedral as an object of intervention. This has strong resonances with Annemarie Mol’s (2002) research focusing on the everyday diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. Like Mol, we have shown that different experts do not simply provide different forms of knowledge about a stable object. Rather, diverse skilled practices, mediated by specific tools and materials, create different objects of attention and concern, for instance through drawing, documentation and stone cutting. Distinct forms of specialist knowledge do not simply exist as different perspectives, but rather reside in the differing techniques at their disposal: a hammer and chisel literally offer different points of leverage to a pen and paper. Through conservation, the Cathedral, and its authenticity, is thus formed through the intersecting practices of heterogeneous actors (cf. Tait and While 2009). As those involved in heritage conservation acknowledge, such differences sometimes lead to tensions and disagreements. Schon argues that: Practitioners are frequently embroiled in conflicts of values, goals, purposes, and interests […] Each view of professional practice represents a way of functioning in situations of indeterminacy and value conflict, but the multiplicity of conflicting views poses a predicament for the practitioner who must choose among multiple approaches to practice or devise his own way of combining them. (2013 [1983]: 17) Conservation practitioners work within common conceptual frameworks, deriving from international instruments and national heritage policies. However, as Harriet Bell (2011) shows for resident experts and professionals involved with the Grade II* listed Spa Green housing estate in England, mutual investment in the need to maintain authenticity masks different views about where it resides and how it can best be maintained. In their curatorial role, members of HS’s Cultural Resources

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Team are particularly attuned to the notion of the building as historic witness and as a document that embodies evidence, in its broadest sense regarding the “national story” (see Chapter 9). As such, they tend to advocate the preservation of the Cathedral’s fabric, unless this places its structural integrity in jeopardy. Masons, by contrast, see themselves as part of an “unbroken chain”, locating authenticity in an enduring tradition of cutting stone that engenders a different, more interventionist, duty of care. Architects bring an emphasis on the design of the building and the rationale behind its architectural components, which can lead them to privilege wider form and function over individual stones and historic fabric. Expert practices thus draw people into different relationships with overarching policy frameworks and conservation philosophies. In attempting to keep the building as it is, some emphasise form, while others privilege material fabric. By the same token, different views are produced about what constitutes minimum intervention. In this way broader philosophical debates, including those of central concern to nineteenth-century conservation thinkers, are refracted through the lens of specific expert practices with respect to particular material contexts. At the same time, the work of all those involved in conserving Glasgow Cathedral inheres in occupying spaces between various kinds of ideas, approaches or interests that are in tension. The virtue of this, as they see it, is in a commitment to striking the best balance; trying to reconcile what ultimately remains irresolvable (cf. Yarrow 2019 for parallels with architects working in commercial practice). Intervention produces a shared sense of jeopardy that underpins mutual recognition of the need to act with balance, judgement and sensitivity. Practitioners seek to guarantee the authenticity of maintenance, repair and reconstruction by anchoring it to the past, even if they enact this in different ways. Curators deploy evidence and documentation, architects produce drawings that emphasise overall continuity of form and design, and masons look to skilled practices of cutting and fixing as an intangible thread of continuity. These different techniques for securing authenticity often coexist alongside one another, but tensions arise when they suggest incommensurable outcomes. Most profoundly, tensions surround the temporal location of conservation practice, in or out of history. For masons, and to some degree architects, conservation work is part of the stream of time, and the weight of tradition provides the means to anchor contemporary interventions to an authentic past. By contrast, for curators, often with a background in archaeology or history, the notion that historic fabric embodies actions and ideas from the past relates to an emphasis on authenticity as a material property. Accordingly, curatorial effort is expended maintaining a “light touch” and ensuring the “reversibility” of interventions. It is clear then that the principles and assumptions making up the discursive nexus of conservation are differentially distributed. Shared understandings are contingent outcomes of the application of specific forms of expertise and skilled practice to particular material contexts rather than their precondition. Relationships between people involving judgement, balance, teamwork and trust are seen to be important in resolving different forms of expertise to produce

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a coherent basis for intervention. Here, perspectival thinking is integral to the way that those involved in conservation of a building understand their different engagements with it: they share the assumption that there is one building, even though they recognise and remark on their different perspectives (and see Chapter 9 for further discussion). This informs the idea of the building as something that helps them to resolve and reconcile their various differences of approach; as something which brings them together. Accordingly, distinct forms of expert knowledge and skilled practice are refracted through specific material contexts, as articulated by the image of different forms of expertise and skilled practice coming together on the scaffold. Thus, authenticity is neither a subjective, discursive construction nor a latent property of historic buildings and monuments waiting to be preserved. Rather it is a distributed property that emerges through the interaction between people and things. In the next chapter, we explore these relations in more depth by taking material transformation and scientific conservation as the locus of attention.

Note 1 Subsequent to our research, this agenda has been consolidated, alongside the promotion of scientific conservation (discussed in Chapter 8), with the opening of a national conservation centre, The Engine Shed, by Historic Environment Scotland. See: https://www.engineshed.scot/, accessed 22 January 2022.

8 MATERIAL TRANSFORMATION AND SCIENTIFIC CONSERVATION

How does the look of age come? … Does it come of itself unobserved, unrecorded, unmeasured? Or do you woo it and set baits and traps for it […] and make it fast when it appears […] Or do you forbid it and fight it and resist it, and yet feel it settling and deepening about you as irresistible as fate? ( James 1875: 75) In the Royal Chapel at Linlithgow Palace, a worn and battered angel looks down from the base of a niche. The carved surface of the sandstone is stained dark, with patches of green on faces conducive to algae and other growths, often referred to as “biofilms” in the conservation world. In some places, the surface has decayed completely, revealing areas of bright orange stone, like gashes, where the fabric is friable and powders at the slightest touch. The angel’s form is still apparent, draped in robes, wavy hair blowing back from its face, framed by wings that rise above its shoulders. A carved decorative collar circles its neck and robes flow down around the body. The angel cradles a stringed musical instrument, probably a spinet, and its elegant fingers are spread out across the keys, as if mid-song. And yet its face, which projects forwards and downwards towards the onlooker, has been almost obliterated by the ravages of time; the features decayed and eroded with only a hint of a mouth remaining, in what is almost a picture of horror. So tattered and wrecked is this musical angel that one wonders if it might also be witness to the wreckage of history caught up in a raging storm from paradise. The analogy may seem far-fetched, given Walter Benjamin’s (1969: 257–258) source of inspiration was Paul Klee’s modernist Angelus Novus (1920), but it is one we will return to later. For this medieval angel is also being propelled into the future; drawn forward from scenes of ruination, although DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-11

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in this case apparently produced by the fearsome hand of nature, rather than a human propensity for destruction. In the context of the nineteenth-century Romantic Movement, such decay was a creative foil for thinking about the ruptures of modernity brought about by an emphasis on utilitarianism and progress. It gave rise to a sublime affect: the realisation of the power of nature evoking a pleasing melancholy and a reminder of the transience and fallibility of humankind’s endeavours (Fawcett and Rutherford 2011: 23–25; Glendinning 2013: 119–121). The individuality and aura created by processes of deterioration was also something to be valued, in opposition to the uniformity of the mass-produced object. For the artist, critic and campaigner, John Ruskin, decay produced a profound, atmospheric presence; a “golden stain of time” (1880 [1849]: § 10, The Lamp of Memory). This look of age, or patina in conservation terms, was in Ruskin’s view the greatest value of a building; the combined effect of nature and the passing waves of humanity. The result is the kind of marks of time that are so palpable in the presence of our Royal Chapel angel and companions; a kind of beauty that “consists in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of Nature” (1880 [1849]: § 16, The Lamp of Memory). In the hands of campaigners like Ruskin, the value they placed on materiality and decay meant that historic buildings and monuments should not be taken back to a former state, in the vein of Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Gilbert Scott and other nineteenth-century restorers (Glendinning 2013; Miele 2011). From Ruskin’s perspective, “[t]he ideal of authenticity, or ‘truth’, [rested] not in the form [of a building] but in the material” (Glendinning 2013: 119). This ethos informed the influential Anti-Scrape Movement, whose proponents condemned with great moral force any intervention beyond basic repairs. The emphasis on historic fabric, minimal intervention and preserve as found in the foundational Athens (Congress Internationaux d’Architecture Modern 1933) and Venice (ICOMOS 1964) Charters was in part a legacy of this movement. With the conservation of art objects, parallel moves can be traced back to nineteenth century debates about the restoration of fragmentary sculptures, with a similar trend towards more cautious intervention. Restoration and reconstruction are of course still components in conservation practice, as are concerns with original intention, form, function and aesthetic value. As Alison Bracker and Alison Richmond (2011 [2009]: xiv) point out, approaches to deterioration vary according to different kinds of object (paintings, sculptures, artefacts, books, monuments) and different contexts (collections, archaeological sites, buildings in use, ruins). However, one way or another, material fabric and its transformation became a dominant concern at the heart of the Western conservation movement during the twentieth century, reinforced by the rise of scientific conservation and heritage science. Furthermore, despite recent attention to cultural significance and intangible heritage, material transformation remains a central preoccupation for those engaged in conservation within HS and related organisations.

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This chapter explores how different conservation practitioners understand and intervene in material transformation. We examine how those involved attempt to measure, understand, modify and arrest deterioration brought about by multiple agencies, such as light, humidity, rain, wind, plants, biofilms, pollution, animals and people. We focus particularly on the work of conservators and the use of scientific expertise, technologies and materials, whilst still attendant to the craft of conservation and the relationships conservators have with a wider range of actors. Ethnographic vignettes reveal that material properties are neither objective facts nor cultural constructs. Rather they emerge as contingent products of the interactions between people and things. As we will show, differing understandings of materials and agencies of change are often aligned and resolved through practice, whilst others persist and are accommodated without necessarily reaching resolution. In the process, the materials making up conservation objects are reassembled and reconstituted through multiple agencies.

Making fast “the look of age” To start with, we pick up on a fundamental question posed by the Romantic veneration of decay and its reflex in the modern conservation movement: “whether, and at what stage, [is] it legitimate to arrest […] decay?” (Glendinning 2013: 121). This predicament was taken up directly by the Austrian art historian, Alois Riegl, in his seminal paper, The Modern Cult of Monuments (1996 [1902]). In setting out to systematically define the key values involved in conservation, Riegl coined the term “age value” to capture the positive emotive response produced by processes of natural deterioration and decay. Like Ruskin, he stressed the importance of the “reign of nature”, including its destructive and disintegrative elements through mechanical and chemical forces (Riegl 1996 [1902]: 58). He argued that the hand of nature has an appropriate temporality, which should not be tampered with by restoration or even merely withdrawing the monument from processes of decay. However, he was also at pains to point out that “the unhampered activity of the forces of nature will ultimately lead to a monument’s complete destruction” (1996 [1902]: 59). In response to this dilemma, Riegl advocated “gentle intervention” to slow down disintegration, because ultimately even the extensive effect of age value is lost, he warned, if the process of decay goes too far and all that is left is a formless “pile of stones” (59). At this point, it is fruitful to return to our alluring musical angel and companions looking down from their extravagant Gothic niches. Under closer scrutiny, even the untutored eye might detect “crusts” peeling away from the surface of the stone and strange amorphous lumps of material here and there. To someone with the kind of “skilled vision” (Grasseni 2004) discussed in the previous chapter, these features come into sharp focus. On a rainy day in July 2013, Erika, one of the HS stone conservators, undertakes a close visual inspection of the carved niches from ground level, with the aid of binoculars and cameras with zoom lenses. The resulting condition survey describes each niche in systematic detail.

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Algal growth is visible especially on up-facing areas. The gothic canopies and niche bases are “worn and delaminating along open bedding planes”. However, the problems identified in Erika’s report are not just down to natural processes of weathering. “Thin pollution crusts” coat much of the remaining carved surfaces, “in particular recessed and sheltered areas”. Furthermore, it transpires that the amorphous lumps of material attached to the angels and their niche canopies are “old mortar repairs”, many of them involving the use of shellac, a resin derived from female Lac insects (Kerria lacca). Photographs evidence the problems, annotated with red arrows to indicate specific issues. Once concerns have been specified through detailed textual descriptions and photography, Erika sets out her recommendations. Fragmentation through lamination “could be stabilised by applying the reversible acrylic resin Paraloid B72 to achieve re-adhesion”. Old mortar repairs should be carefully removed mechanically, though this should only be attempted if it does not damage adjacent fabric. Areas of thick pollution crust could be removed using a laser cleaner, described as “a mostly cosmetic process”, but one that might also aid the prevention of future surface blistering caused by salts and moisture that get trapped behind the impervious crusts. The conclusion is succinct and emphasises “extensive decay with several areas at imminent risk of loss”. Safety issues are highlighted: “a sizeable part of the upper canopy may be unsafe”. Treatment is recommended as a matter of urgency to prevent further losses of significant historical evidence, but also with the safety of visitors and staff in mind. A letter addressed to the regional architect from the relevant heritage manager is held on file with the report. It grants scheduled monument consent for the proposed work based on the condition survey. The production of a retrospective report detailing the conservation carried out within four weeks of its completion is a condition of the consent, “to ensure that the work is carried out to an acceptable standard and that a record of the work to the site is kept”. To revisit Henry James’ questions with which this chapter opened, it appears that the Linlithgow angel’s “look of age” has not “come of itself unobserved, unrecorded, unmeasured”. Erika’s condition survey objectifies the angel, and more specifically, particular aspects of deterioration, as an object of attention and concern (compare Otero-Pailos 2016: 25). Furthermore, it is clear from the old mortar repairs that this has happened before, and the look of age “made fast” temporarily, if ultimately unsuccessfully, by the work of former conservation practitioners. By 30 July 2013, Erika and two other stone conservators, Callum and Jim, are at work on a scaffold erected next to the carved niches in the Chapel. Each of them is working on a different niche. Erika is applying methylated spirit to the surface of an old shellac-based repair on the top of one of the niche canopies. This softens it, so after a while, she can peel bits off with the help of a “key” – a tiny metal tool with a flattened end. Callum is tapping his decaying angel gingerly, removing loose bits of old repairs, then gently brushing the stone to remove algal growth and thin sulphur crusts. Meanwhile, Jim is injecting consolidant into fine cracks on the niche base he is working on (Figure 8.1). It should not form a barrier

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A stone conservator at work on one of the carved musical angels in the Royal Chapel at Linlithgow Palace (S. Jones). FIGURE 8.1 

to moisture and air, he explains several times through the day, attentive to the material needs of the stone. The acrylic resin-based consolidant is therefore dissolved in acetone and/or methylated spirit. Once he has injected the finer cracks, he finishes things off with acrylic mortar – colour-matched sand that he mixes with 10% acrylic resin in acetone. The conservators mostly work in silence engrossed in the objects of their attention. More talkative than the others, Jim interjects with punctuated comments that go largely unanswered by his colleagues, “this bit’s a cracker, it’s like sponge, I reckon we could put it on a drip overnight”. And in asides to me, “it will take a lot of patience, but I can do something with it”, and then more grimly, “it’s last ditch stuff though”, “we’ll be lucky if it’s still there in 10 years”. The medical metaphors he uses give a sense of the jeopardy of the whole affair; “first aid”, “on a drip”, “intensive care”. Sometimes they stop to debate a particularly tricky bit of consolidation. It is generally agreed amongst them that the old shellac on Erika’s niche canopy “was slagered on” (meaning slathered). But the question is, can the underlying stone take it if Erika tries to remove it? Jim thinks no, but Erika is going to have a go. She emphasises that the justification for removing

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it is not just its unsightly nature. The most important point is that the way it has been applied – “like a thick surface render” – has created a barrier and water is getting trapped behind it, “turning the stone behind to mush”.

Working with “the thing itself” Through their practices, the three conservators constitute the objects of their attention – the niches with their angels and Gothic canopies – as discrete entities. The condition survey extracts these elaborately carved elements from the building as a whole and objectifies them through systematic observation and description. The practices of observation and documentation manifested in it are important for achieving the kinds of oversight, regulation and consent enacted by the architects and heritage managers, as is the report that Erika will produce afterwards, documenting their work in some detail. These practices produce the kind of separation of subject and object that we discuss in Chapter 4, involving active cultivation of objectivity and detachment. They also allow the “co-ordination” of different ways of enacting the object of conservation, so that they can be aligned to produce a singular, coherent object (cf. Mol 2002: 54–55). Yet, in between, other spatially disparate practices produce different kinds of objects and relationships, as we saw for Glasgow Cathedral in the previous chapter. Condition surveys (visual appraisal from the ground) are all very well, Jim informs SJ over lunch the week before the work started, “but you can’t tell a thing until you’re up there on the scaffold”. Once on the scaffold, a manifestly intimate and tactile set of relationships unfolds. Close visual inspection is followed by tapping and listening to identify loose fragments and voids; bringing touch and vision together in a multi-sensory exploration. Gentle pushing and prodding are used to test for movement like a clinician assessing a damaged limb. This kind of “tactile knowing” involving “use of the hands in skilled, sensory ways” is redolent of that described by Sarah Pink, Jennie Morgan and Andrew Dainty (2014: 438) in their research with nurses and physiotherapists (also in relation to museum objects in Pink and Morgan 2013: 356). Just as sensitive, responsive touch plays a key role in patient care and treatment, it is also integral to caring for decaying stone, producing a multi-sensory, material understanding. Watching their work, it is clear that the practices of technical stone conservation involve a constant weighing up of how to proceed, as in the case of stonemasonry, architectural appraisal, and regulatory regimes carried out by heritage managers, to name just some of the other practices discussed in this book. Nevertheless, the materials and modes of skilled vision are distinctive. Encountering a particularly tricky bit of decay, the stone conservators often turn their attention to something more straightforward, as if giving themselves time to digest the state it’s in and formulate the right response. How strong or tight is a bit of stone? How much resin should be injected? What size of needle to use? What fragments of stone might have to be sacrificed if they are “too far gone”? Medical analogies are foregrounded by the tools they use – syringes and

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instruments like dental tools – as well as the ways the conservators engage with the stone, physically and linguistically (compare Smith and Pr ǐ kryl 2007). The importance of hand-eye co-ordination is palpable and commented on. “It can be a bit like brain surgery”, Erika jokes, and Jim explains how he intermittently pulsates the end of the syringe, allowing the resin time to soak into a fine crack he is working on, “otherwise you’ll just flood the surface of the stone”. Asked by one of us if she thinks these medical metaphors and parallels are used a lot, Erika replies “oh not really”, just as Jim approaches and exclaims, “[W]hat’s the verdict doctor?”. Yet, it is the way they (re-)assemble materials, and negotiate the fine balance between decay and intervention, that leads us to foreground the practices of the conservators in this chapter. They stress the care involved in the work they do and express dismay when they feel things have been left too long. Jim stresses that the pleasure is in “doing it right” so that “something is still there in ten years’ time”, whilst acknowledging with resignation that, “at the end of the day, we’re just delaying the inevitable really”. As with other HS practitioners, there is also anxiety linked to the jeopardy of intervention: “[A]m I doing the right thing?” is never a straightforwardly procedural question. Each conservation object requires a specific response, sensitive to its socio-material conditions, at the same time intersecting with complexly entwined issues, ranging from the philosophical (when and how to intervene in the “look of age”) to the technical (which of a range of techniques available will work best in this instance). The conservators express a particular kind of ambivalence about the relationship between their work and the object of conservation. They are keenly aware of the ways in which they change the thing itself, but at the same time they attempt to sublimate their own place in its ongoing biography. “I’m not here to preserve something permanent”, Erika tells one of us in an interview, “I’m not an artist, my role is to keep the historic material here a bit longer”. Visibility, authenticity and honesty are central concerns. Erika recounts her discomfort at being asked in a previous job to make her work more visible, to ensure that the difference between her work and the original would be evident to the public gaze. It went against her craftsmanship she explains, “I was like, what…? My view is that if you get up close and see the difference in the material that’s enough […] It doesn’t need to stand out like a sore thumb”. Jim makes a similar point, telling SJ how he had asked the architect at Glasgow Cathedral about the extensive, visible stone replacement. As a conservator, he clarifies, it’s ok to see the repair if you look really closely, but: “you should always see the thing itself, not the repair” (our emphasis). Jim’s discussion with the architect lays bare the micro-politics of conservation, because as Annemarie Mol (2002: 177) points out the question “what to do?” is a political one, something we will return to in Chapter 9. For now, it is enough to note that in order to produce certain forms of authenticity located in the appreciation of “the thing itself ”, the conservators seek to make it visibly indistinct except on close inspection. In the case of the Linlithgow angels and their

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canopies, this is mainly achieved by mixing up acrylic mortar based on Paraloid B72, acetone and coloured sand that blends with the colour of the surrounding sandstone. They had brought several jars of coloured sands from the South Gyle workshop to Linlithgow to mix on site as needed. “Colour-matching” seemed second nature to Jim and Erika, who barely paid attention whilst doing it. Only Callum, who had been with them a mere three months, spent time mixing up different combinations and testing them on the stone. Yet, these intuitive and tactile practices are ultimately bracketed off from the conserved object, invisible in the systematic, factual report that Erika will produce when the work is completed.

Craft and science in material conservation The work that Erika, Jim and Callum are doing at Linlithgow Palace contrasts with that of the stonemasons. They are all engaged with material transformation, but their work represents two distinct strands within the modern conservation movement; one located in traditional craft skills and materials and the other in the rise of scientific conservation and heritage science. As discussed in Chapter 7, the work of the stonemasons at Glasgow Cathedral is central to an ambitious, long-term conservation project: removing and replacing decaying stone, raking out and repointing mortar, and brushing off pollution crusts. Substantial replacement of original fabric on this Category A listed PiC is justified by the need to keep it watertight and well maintained, as a roofed building in active use (see Chapter 9). The stonemason’s work is based on extensive evidence derived from archaeological, historical and geological research, informing both the materials they use and, to some extent, the forms they cut. It is also documented in minute detail to provide a record that distinguishes the new work from the old. Yet, ultimately the authenticity of their work is understood and performed as an outcome of craft skills that the masons embody, and the traditional materials and tools they deploy. Stonemasonry is also used in the conservation of Linlithgow Palace, although at a different scale. Linlithgow is the earliest surviving Scottish royal palace, rebuilt in the style of a Renaissance pleasure palace by the Stewart kings, but subsequently gutted by fire in 1746, during occupation by soldiers of the Duke of Cumberland. Preserved as a ruin since it was placed in the care of the Office of Works in 1874, Linlithgow is a scheduled monument (along with its royal park). The scheduled monument record defines its national importance in the following terms, which justify significant investment in its conservation: The standing structure is one of the most important late medieval buildings in Scotland and the most impressive medieval palace. […] The loss of the monument would significantly diminish our future ability to appreciate and understand Scotland’s royal palaces and their role in the promotion of kingship.1

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Scottish castles and palaces have complex biographies, involving everything from active cultivation of a ruined aesthetic, through to preservation and restoration, all of which have significant material ramifications (Fawcett and Rutherford 2011). In most cases, “conserve as found” has been HS’s preferred approach, although there are exceptions, most notably with the restoration of Stirling Castle’s Great Hall (ibid: 109–115; Fawcett 2001). Yet, adopting a position of minimal intervention also has its challenges, such as exposed wall heads, the growth of plants and biofilms, and the influx of animals. These in turn impact on rates of stone decay, with potentially severe deterioration of elaborately carved stone, some of which was originally designed for interior, roofed spaces. The kind of work the conservators are doing on the Linlithgow angels is usually reserved for small areas of carved stone of particular aesthetic and/or historic value. Located in a chapel that was once the site of royal worship, the Statement of Significance for the Palace attributes the angels’ high levels of significance, as “wonderfully carved” figures with unusually detailed depictions of historic instruments.2 Rather than have stonemasons carve replacements, the conservators are charged with undertaking remedial work to consolidate as much of the original stone as possible. The ways in which practical experience, judgement and multisensory ways of knowing are inflected in their practices, speaks to what they see as their craft. However, this is performed and articulated very differently from the craft of stonemasonry. Whilst the materials the conservators add to the historic fabric of the building are also documented in detail, they negotiate the authenticity of their work and its relation “to the thing itself ” through the lens of scientific conservation. The twentieth century saw a growing emphasis on scientific techniques and materials for apprehending, monitoring and modifying decay aimed at minimising loss of original materials (Kandiah and Cassar 2014). Characterised by an emphasis on “hard science”, Salvador Muñoz Viñas (2011 [2005]) argues that scientific conservation gained increasing prominence from the 1950s onwards. Often recognised through its techniques and its symbols (laboratories, white coats, chemicals, microscopes), it also carried a powerful “truth value” and repositioned conservation within wider scientific frameworks oriented “to knowing the properties of materials and to understanding deterioration processes” (ibid: 70, emphasis in original). This “scientistic materialism” with its claims to universality and associated ideals of objectivity, rigour, rationality, verification and testing became a strong component in the professionalisation and training of technical conservators (Winter 2014: 130–131; also Bracker and Richmond 2011 [2009]). Today, conservators routinely employ analytical techniques to identify the material properties of the objects they work on and the nature and extent of their decay. This is particularly important in conducting “remedial conservation”, aimed at stabilising existing physical damage though adding or removing materials. The materials they use in these processes (e.g. adhesives, resins, consolidants, solvents) are developed through scientific research and produced using modern industrial processes. Understanding original materials is also an

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important aspect of remedial conservation, with samples taken for various kinds of scientific analysis, such as petrography. “Preventative conservation”, aimed at minimising or preventing material deterioration, also draws on scientific techniques for monitoring and controlling environmental agents and processes of decay (e.g. water, relative humidity, temperature, light, chemical and biological agents). These practices in turn are supported by a wider body of scientific research, often referred to as conservation or heritage science, much of which focuses on studying agents of decay and their impact, along with the development of new techniques for monitoring and managing them (Williams 2009). Research in heritage science is also concerned with the development of new technologies for application in conservation (e.g. nanotechnological consolidants, laser cleaning and use of biotechnology). Despite its universalising claims, scientific conservation is deployed in specific, spatially distributed ways within HS. Environmental monitoring in one form or another is undertaken at many of the PiCs. Relative humidity, light and temperature are monitored with data loggers in buildings and in display cases containing portable objects from the Collections. More technologically complex methods include the use of: laser surveys to record erosion and monitor changes over time; thermal imaging to detect water ingress and damp; portable nondestructive techniques for materials analysis, such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry; and physical sampling for petrographic analysis. As we have seen, HS conservators also add adhesives, resins and occasionally sealants, as well as cleaning techniques and occasionally biocides during on site remedial conservation. However, scientific conservation practices and related heritage science coalesce at the Technical Conservation Unit where the Applied Conservation Team is based. “South Gyle”, as it is known, is a slightly shabby 1970s industrial building located on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The contrast with HS’s headquarters at Longmore House, a neo-classical Category B listed building located in an affluent part of the city, could not be starker. Inside, much of South Gyle is taken up with a single large workshop, which doubles up as storage. First impressions are of a bewildering array of material culture – tools, scientific equipment, carved stones, lifting equipment, cabinets of conservation materials. As you move further into the space there are lots of monumental medieval carved stones, some lying flat, some standing in newly fashioned mounts, others held by hoists. At one side is a large tank, which serves as a bath for removing salts from stones. Stone samples from different quarries are arranged around the walls, along with antiquated-looking glass cabinets filled with jars of different coloured sand and powdered stone. Doors opening off this large, central area lead to a series of workshops and labs. The moulding lab is “a nasty place to be, sticky, all glued up”, according to Gavin, one of the other stone conservators. There are remnant latex moulds taken from stones that have returned to their locations on historic sites, like discarded skins they left behind. Replicas of all sorts sit on workbenches and adorn

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the walls, ranging from carved wooden bosses from Stirling Castle to medieval carved stones, some life-sized and some miniatures. Attentive to the differential production practices, Gavin points out those that are made of plaster and produced by manual, contact techniques, and those replicas that are cut in stone or acrylic by machine from high-resolution three-dimensional scans. Reflecting on this issue, he mentions a hybrid example where a mason had been asked to “dress” the surface by hand after it had been machine cut; to give it a more authentic aesthetic he suggests, but perhaps also predicated on the ways in which authenticity is negotiated through the use of traditional crafts. Beyond the moulding lab is a room devoted to preparing “acrylic mortar”, from Paraloid B72 resin and sand/ground stone. It is a dusty place, separated off by a thick plastic screen hanging in the doorway. Around the walls are jars and jars of coloured sands and ground stone, arranged like a Dulux paint chart (silica based on one side and carbonate based on the other). Elsewhere, there is a computer lab with powerful machines devoted mainly to processing high-resolution 3D data, whereas other spaces within the building aspire to scientific laboratory conditions, where the conservation science team and painting conservators work. The spatial distribution of practices, and the different kinds of labour involved, from the meticulous preparation of a microscopic slide to the physical labour of lifting and treating monumental stone, to the sticky, dusty activities of preparing moulds and mixing acrylic mortar, are all simultaneously held apart and brought together within the building. Perhaps the best example of how this comes about, and particularly how scientific practices and materials are united with experience and subjective judgement, can be found in the painting conservation “studio”.

Enacting conservation Maria, a painting conservator with Italian training, enthusiastically shows SJ around the studio, explaining in detail what she and her colleague do. On entering, the immediate impression is one of order, tranquillity and precision. There are two distinct areas of the room; one end devoted to office work and the other to a laboratory. Whereas the former is replete with art history books and conservation manuals, art postcards and family photographs, the latter contains lab benches, scientific equipment, a sample production area and a pigment mixing area. Various solvents and other substances sit on shelves and in cupboards. There is a distinctive chemical smell and health and safety concerns are conspicuous; ventilation equipment, goggles, gloves and warning signs. In the middle of the room, at the juncture between these two areas, is a large early twentieth-century portrait standing on an easel. Literally centre stage, it speaks to a focal performative space where the refined art of painting conservation is orchestrated. Maria gravitates to this pivotal area to articulate the essential purpose and nature of her practice. For while the craft and science of conservation are laid bare in the spatial distribution of material culture, they are brought together in this central arena where conservation is enacted on particular objects.

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Maria emphasises the importance of investigative research in the conservation process. She gathers information on an artist, as well as the history of the work of art and its prior conservation, drawing on art historical and archival sources, while scientific analytical techniques play a key role in unpicking the material biography of a painting. “Light is a tool, we use a lot”, she says, flicking through folders containing the “before and after” photographic record of their work on a large oil painting, View of Leith with Galleon. She explains how ultraviolet light is repeatedly used during the conservation process to reveal things about the surface and its varnish, as well as some retouching, whereas infrared reflectography reveals things under the surface, such as areas of damage, along with overpainting and retouch. Minute samples of varnish and paint, carefully extracted with a scalpel from the edge of paintings, are embedded in resin and polished up before being scrutinised under optical and polarising microscopes. The polarising microscope is particularly useful for the study of crystalline materials and the identification of pigments, Maria explains, but “it’s not always straightforward”. So sometimes they also use the portable XRF machine to look at the elemental composition of the pigments; highlighting a kind of “tinkering” that is often taken for granted and rendered invisible (Markauskaite and Goodyear 2017; Ravetz 1971). Taking out some samples that have already been prepared Maria describes how, “[W]hen you are grinding the sample you have to reach the right level, and again, it’s very difficult because you are dealing with really microscopic size and sometimes if you grind too much, […] maybe just one micron, you remove the information you need”. The success of the analysis thus depends in part on “craftwork” (Clarke and Fujimura 1992: 10; Ravetz 1971), in the sense of the tacit knowledge and embodied skills involved in the preparation of the sample, as well as the ability of the conservator to interpret the nature of a pigment from the crystalline structure revealed under a polarising microscope. Varnishes can be particularly elusive. Maria observes that staining tests can provide general information about the type of binder used, or the presence of lead in the sample, but they are not that precise because various factors like “heterogeneous chemical composition […], ageing processes […], or porous layers can easily contribute to a false positive or negative staining result”. Indeed, the difficulties involved and the indeterminate nature of the techniques they use are constantly underscored in our conversation. Maria turns to her current project, a serious, early twentieth-century portrait titled Captain Macintosh, to further illustrate the indeterminate nature of the analytical techniques. “This is keeping me awake during the night!”, she says jokingly, alluding to a previous conversation about the jeopardy associated with authenticity and intervening in the biography of paintings. She continues: [Y]ou can see there is a problem with discolouration in the varnish, although the painting is in sound condition […] So mainly the problem is just in the varnish and I’ve been trying to do some cleaning tests. One day

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the cleaning test worked […] [But] the day after I did this corner and you can’t see anything! And it wasn’t working. Thus, like the 17th-century building, Alte Aula, in Vienna, studied by Albena Yaneva, Captain Macintosh has the ability to “surprise”, which requires constant re-evaluation and adjustment (2008: 18–20). Furthermore, like Yaneva’s conservation object, the painting is “recalcitrant”. It resists the logic of cleaning, which assumes that people tend to apply the same varnish across the whole surface. Captain Macintosh, like Alte Aula, “comes to light as a performative agent that resists with stubbornness, hinders or facilitates specific ways of accommodating the programmatic requirements” (Yaneva 22–23). The “cleaning test” Maria refers to is a solubility test, involving mixtures of solvents with known parameters in a process of trial and error. “It’s quite an indirect way to know which kind of material you are removing”, but ultimately they are seeking to find “the one that works”. The conundrum in the case of Captain Macintosh, is why a specific solubility mixture works on some parts and not on others. Contemplating the artwork Maria muses on the problem: “[I]f in the past the painting has been restored, maybe they might have removed part of the varnish […] and kept part of the varnish. And [then] you might have two different varnishes…”. All the evidence from Maria’s research is marshalled in an examination report, but still the analytical techniques she employs underdetermine practice; subjectivity and accumulated experience play key roles. Judgement centres on what to keep and what to remove, how far to go with your intervention. So, with The View of Leith with Galleon, Maria decided to remove quite a lot of the overpaint, because it was so extensive and obscured the original brush marks, which are part of the quality of the original. With other paintings she might value the retouching or overpainting as part of a painting’s biography, “its story”. Even the varnish is part of the story, Maria acknowledges, although it is designed to be sacrificial, “so it’s the one that tends to be replaced, although maybe other people say well, you should respect even the varnish and the discoloration of the varnish […] it’s part of it, so again, it’s very difficult”. Here Maria makes a distinction between restoration, involving the “removal of everything that is not part of the original”, and conservation, where you “keep what you’ve got and you might remove something only if keeping it there would damage your object”. There is, she says, a space where “we can still play inbetween”. She continues, “I like to stay in the middle”, but at the same time “it’s one of the most difficult decisions to take, because it’s always the ethical [question] that you think oh, you shouldn’t, or we should, or we don’t know”. She is nevertheless quick to emphasise that her work is not creative in an artistic way: “[Y]ou are changing probably, but not creating”. This sensibility resonates with Spelman’s arguments about repair, which returns to an act of creation, but is simultaneously distinguished from it by a “conservative commitment […] to continuity” (2002: 126). In accordance with this commitment, judgement is a crucial

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ingredient in Maria’s own appraisal of her practice, “because there is no one right method to use for doing something, or completely wrong one”. In the process of intervening in the material biography of the work of art, Maria skilfully negotiates the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the analytical techniques she uses. What she sees down a microscope or in an infrared reflectogram is not entirely borne out in the painting as she works on it, and the techniques she marshals inform her judgement but fall short of determining her actions. If the results of the various techniques she employs fail to produce a single coherent materiality, they are lived with and worked through. As with the multiple versions of the disease that Mol (2002) discusses, the various ways of enacting the materiality of a painting and its problems are more or less co-ordinated in the act of intervening. Furthermore, the universality of the knowledge produced through scientific practices is qualified and distributed, as with the treatment of atherosclerosis in Mol’s Dutch hospital. The following arguments would hold up equally well, for instance, if we were to substitute medicine with conservation: A shared, coherent ontology is not required for treatment and prevention practices. Incompatibilities between objects enacted are no obstacle to medicine’s capabilities to intervene – as long as the incompatible variants are separated out. […] Medicine’s incoherence is no flaw that requires to be mended; it does not designate a sad lack of scientificity. That the ontology enacted in medical practice is an amalgam of variants-in-tension is more likely to contribute to the rich, adaptable, and yet tenacious character or medical practice. (ibid: 115) This highlights a common problem with both the forceful advocacy of conservation/heritage science (Kandiah and Cassar 2014) and the increasingly energetic critiques of it (Muñoz Viñas 2011 [2005]; Winter 2013). The issue lies in the association of science with universalism; promulgated by its proponents and dismissed by its detractors. For all the positive characteristics of Muñoz Viñas’ (2011 [2005]) theorisation of conservation, for instance, he ultimately falls back on a form of semiotic perspectivalism. Even those who prefer to deal with ontologies (e.g. Harrison 2015: 39–40) feel the need to bring the notion of pluralism into the frame to deal with the multiplicity of overlapping perspectives. If we explore the practices involved in conservation instead (Mol 2002), we see that, whilst they produce distinct objects of attention and associated realities, they are separated out or “distributed” in ways that allow them to be skilfully negotiated and coordinated by those involved, as with the various practices Maria uses. Ultimately a coherent intervention is produced, as Maria explains, “Because at the end it’s the whole composition that has to be… the painting, it’s the whole composition; it’s not just that centimetre or just that little square”. Inconsistencies and gaps in the knowledge produced through different analytic techniques can co-exist. Alignment is not necessary so long as they are consistent with, and in

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the service of, an idea of the coherence of the painting as a whole. Thus, the different practices Maria is engaged in, and the different kinds of materiality produced, can be both held apart and brought together strategically in the unfolding conservation of the work of art. But what happens when attempts to co-ordinate scientific conservation with other forms of conservation practice lead to more overt incompatibilities or controversies?

Negotiating difference Maria and Elspeth’s work on painted objects is not restricted to “easel paintings”, as they call them, but also extends to in situ “structural paintings” on wood, metal and wall plaster. Most of this work is of a “first aid” nature and consists of stabilising/consolidating vulnerable areas with little in the way of cleaning or retouch. For instance, with painted plaster they usually use hydraulic lime mortar, sometimes with the addition of resins, to fill cracks in the plaster. Maria explains that the main challenges with the conservation of structural paintings are to do with the spaces they work in and the demands of public access. Yet, there is one particular example that stands out in terms of friction between scientific and other forms of conservation practice: the painted ceiling of the partially subterranean Chapter House at Dryburgh Abbey in the Scottish Borders. This is the largest area of medieval polychromatic wall decoration in Scotland. However, it has been at risk for some time from water ingress and high relative humidity, which creates ideal conditions for the growth of biofilms (particularly algae). Prior architectural interventions include re-roofing and waterproofing, as well as relining an historic drain to ameliorate rising damp, but these have had little impact on the growth of biofilms. The significance of the painting and the apparent jeopardy it faces has resulted in a wide range of scientific analyses and trials. Yet, in this case, the diverse and at times inconclusive results threaten the coherence of the specific interventions. We explored the dilemmas surrounding scientific conservation, authenticity and material transformation at Dryburgh Abbey as part of a related research project (Douglas-Jones et al. 2016) and we draw on that work in the following account. Maria and Elspeth have carried out remedial conservation of the painted plaster applying a highly diluted biocide to the biofilms. There are regular checks with re-application when necessary. They have also tried ultraviolet light treatment with Rich, a former HS employee and now independent conservator, but it is not clear whether this has made a difference. Whereas some regard the use of biocide as a temporary measure, Maria explains that it seems quite stable. She stresses that she and Elspeth have done a comparative study with images from 50–60 years ago and while there is “evidence of some loss, [it is] not much”. Meanwhile, Rich has carried out wider scientific research with a view to preventative conservation. Data-loggers have been used to monitor the relative humidity (RH) and the movement of condensing air, revealing high RH (at times greater than 90%). He explains that “incorrect relative humidity is probably

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the biggest way of accelerating decay”. Thus, he proposed the introduction of a door and window glazing, allowing active control of humidity to discourage biological growths, which was the focus of an experimental trial in a small adjoining room during 2012–2013. Rich’s proposals attend to the specific problem of biocolonisation, framed by the environmental data he has gathered. In an interview he explains: I felt I was on pretty safe ground, the science was good, there was a minimal risk of […] unpredicted damage, and a definite possibility of improvement, and also active decay that could have been halted, so […] let’s glaze the windows, put a door in, put a de-humidifier in, a very do-able project. Yes, a big project, but do-able. To his mind, the “uniqueness” of the plaster justifies the significant architectural interventions proposed to achieve environmental control. Yet, while the trial demonstrated that RH (and growth of biofilms) could successfully be controlled through this method, painting conservators, architects and monument staff express concerns regarding such an intervention. Their ambivalence and resistance relate in part to distinct objects of concern, and the question of minimal risk to what? Maria and Elspeth know the case well, visiting regularly to undertake biocidal treatment. The object of their attention is the painting constituted through the practices of remedial conservation in which they are trained. In their view, the “conservative” methods they use are tried and tested. In contrast, they highlight the potential unforeseen impact of Rich’s proposed preventative measures, in particular the possibility of increased salt formation. Elspeth explains her unease: “I don’t want to have it all on my head, doing something so major on such a precious thing”, and, “I feel like it’s a bit too precious a place just to do an experiment with, in a way”. “Often we go looking for answers”, she muses, “and we tend to think that ‘if science has told you’, then it must be right. And in some cases it is, but not always”. For Randall, the HS architect responsible for co-ordinating decision-making at the site, the unknown effects of sealing off the Chapter House and controlling RH through dehumidification are also a source of apprehension. His concern that dehumidification can actually draw moisture through the walls of a building at a faster rate, and in the process increase salt efflorescence in the stone, is shared by other architects. At Dryburgh, the added danger is that these salts might impact adversely on the fragile painted plaster. The agency of the building and its materiality are also brought into play at this point; “I don’t think we have got an idea of how the Chapter House would react”, Randall muses. Scientific results are also just one of many factors, Randall explains: “I think the architect’s role is to give the wider picture and see whether it fits in with all the other parameters one has on that space”. Within this frame of reference, the interventions required for dehumidification of the Chapter House also have

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widespread ramifications for the values associated with it and indeed its authenticity. An enclosed staircase would have to be added, but this, he points out, would need to be based on conjecture. He envisages that “a clean and modern glass box that would need to be built […] on the entrance”; an architectural intervention that clearly differentiates the new from the original fabric. That would require “another discussion with not only our conservation colleagues but also heritage management colleagues about the setting […] and it would be a tricky conversation you can see”. Reflecting further on the wider setting and the range of actors associated with it, Randall projects other kinds of vision onto the interventions that Rich’s scheme would require. “[S]ome people would hate that”, he emphasises, demonstrating the way in which conservation architects routinely weigh up various perspectives during deliberation: “A lot of people use that space for weddings and they like the wholeness of [it] I think; the fact that it has hardly had any intervention at all since the nineteenth century”. Visitor Services staff based at the monument are perhaps most familiar with the day-to-day use of the Chapter House, including its use as a wedding venue. They too emphasise the space as a whole and stress that it needs to look as “natural” as possible. They enter into long debates about the implications of the proposed architectural interventions to control the environmental conditions. What kind of door would be “appropriate” and “authentic”? Would it have metal hinges? If so what kind? They are concerned about how conservation efforts focused in on the painted plaster might affect the revenue gained through wedding bookings, and thereby the future of the site as a whole. “You can’t put in a glass door”, one seasonal worker comments, “unless you have a very good reason. If you closed off the Chapter House, you’d be taking something away from the Abbey – the freedom to just go in.” For him, this “freedom” allows a visitor to experience “how it might have been”. Here the continuing influence of a Romantic aesthetic is foregrounded, something that is prominent in the presentation and marketing of the site and reinforced by the mature wooded setting and the lasting currency of the literary works of authors like Sir Walter Scott (who is buried in the North Transept of Dryburgh Abbey). Tourists moving between the iconic “Border Abbeys” express positive orientations to decay as “natural”, sometimes connecting this to biological understandings of life (Douglas-Jones et al. 2016). One expressed a desire for Dryburgh to “have death in beauty”; another for it to “be able to decay slowly, without us preventing it”. Biological growth in most areas of the Abbey (although not specifically the biofilms in the Chapter House) was appreciated aesthetically: one couple pointing to growth on the ruin’s walls explained “it has been there for hundreds of years and I think […] we should keep that”. What happens when different kinds of expert practice cannot be aligned or co-ordinated? Maria explains that they got the results of the trial, but “at the end everything has been left [as it was]”. Randall goes into more detail about the processes of decision-making he orchestrates: they had a meeting and “everyone was there” (see Chapter 3 for in-depth discussion of meetings as an institutional

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form). Careful to acknowledge Rich’s divergent position, he explains that the majority view was that the periodic use of dilute biocides is likely to do less “harm” than dehumidification, because as a form of intervention it is more contained and has far fewer ramifications for other aspects of the building. For Rich, there is continuing frustration that the scientific results are being set aside. As he sees it, the trial worked: “of course it worked, because it would work. I mean, that’s what the science predicted, so it worked”. Asked about the relationship between architectural and scientific approaches, Randall responds: I don’t know whether they easily fit together. I mean the science approach is very factual, scientific in terms of you’re dealing with facts there that you’ve set down of absolute conditions that are perceived at one time. The trouble is they’re only a snapshot. The trouble is they may not be typical of the other uses that the spaces get […]. So, I think they always have to be put in context. I think they’re very good for providing the data to say yes, we can achieve this if we did this, or there is this possibility we can go down and this would give us this. I just think the architect’s role is to give the wider picture and see whether that fits in with all the other parameters one has on that space and the fabric. As in the other examples discussed in this book, the different forms of expertise and the frames of reference associated with them do not just provide different perspectives; they produce different objects of attention and concern. Yet, this case adds further complexity by revealing “switches” between these objects and their associated scenes (Mol 2002: 124). In one scene, the painted plaster is central stage, in another the Chapter House, in yet another the Abbey, and so forth. Modes of reasoning and forms of skill shift accordingly. All may agree on the importance of preservation of the whole at some level, but which whole? Mol argues that, rather than nested wholes, these different objects of attention are held “side by side” (2002: 149), but when they interfere with one another friction occurs. In many instances, forms of mutual inclusion and coexistence are negotiated, but sometimes hierarchies of practice and associated forms of knowledge prevail and certain scenes and objects of attention are privileged. As Mol (2002: 150) observes for medicine, the singularity of objects of conservation is a hard-won accomplishment and the relative scarcity of disagreements is a remarkable achievement.

Conclusion: (re)assembling the object of conservation Both commentators and practitioners recognise that conservation involves material change and as such it is an active intervention in the biographies of historic monuments, buildings and objects (see contributions to Richmond and Bracker 2011 [2009]). In the previous chapter, we discussed how stonemasons, conservation architects and heritage managers are involved in the removal and addition

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of materials to the fabric of Glasgow Cathedral in an ambitious project of maintenance and repair. Other sites, such as Stirling Castle, are renowned for their restoration and reconstruction, involving more extensive material transformation, but nevertheless grounded in evidence derived from meticulous research (contributions to Fawcett 2001). Yet, as we have seen in this chapter, even sites preserved as ruins, such as Linlithgow Palace and Dryburgh Abbey, are subject to significant intervention; a tradition which extends back to the Romantic era when ruination was actively and artfully cultivated (Fawcett and Rutherford 2011: 23–30; Lowenthal 1985). Thus, in practice, those involved in conservation usually find themselves working in the space between conservative stabilisation and consolidation on the one hand, and full-scale restoration and reconstruction on the other, navigating complex material histories, including earlier campaigns of conservation. Extending Elisabeth Spelman’s argument on repair, heritage conservation is interventionist but also necessarily “presumptuous in its insistence that a given point in the history of something, or a given condition of something, is more important than any other point or condition” (2002: 125). Always conscious of the moral jeopardy involved, and the ways their work may be judged in the gaze of others, those involved debate amongst themselves, and indeed with themselves. In the words of Maria, “[S]hould we, or shouldn’t we?”. Nevertheless, access to specific skills and techniques tends to presume and precipitate their use. In this sense, expertise finds its object. By focusing on material transformation close-up, this chapter challenges the understanding of buildings as “ostensibly inert, seemingly bounded, usually obdurate, […] situated and static” ( Jacobs and Merriman 2011: 212). Like others, we have shown that historic buildings and monuments involve vital and dynamic assemblages of materials and agencies in complex networks (DeSilvey 2017; Edensor 2011; Tait and While 2009; Yaneva 2008). At Dryburgh Abbey, green algae and lichens colonise the damp painted ceilings and walls of the Chapter House creating “biofilms”. In the oil paintings Maria attends to, dirt has built up on the surfaces of the paintings and light has also left its mark, causing pigments to fade and varnish to crack over time. Finally, the sandstone fabric of the Linlithgow Palace musical angels with whom we began this chapter has cracked and disintegrated with the effects of weather and salt efflorescence. Moisture trapped in carved surfaces that were never designed for an exterior environment cause minerals to leach out and form hard iron oxide crusts that eventually lift away from the surface, peeling grains of soft sandstone substrate with them. The network of agents and materials could be extended indefinitely. The conservators themselves, and their predecessors, are part of these complex sets of relations. Painting conservators add new varnishes and resins on oil paintings, at the same time as using solvents to remove those their predecessors added. Stone conservators apply poultices and place elaborate carved stones in large electrolyte baths to aid the removal of salts. Whilst they add acrylic resins to repair cracks in weathered stone, a significant part of their work also involves the careful

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removal of materials added in previous conservation campaigns: iron pins holding together fragments of carved stone, old shellac repairs that are causing problems with the movement of water and salts. Thus, as Caitlin DeSilvey (2017: 33) puts it: “[S]trategies to arrest decay always destroy some cultural traces, even as they preserve others”. Our account, therefore, shows that heritage objects emerge as a result of dialogic relationships between human and non-human agents (DeSilvey 2017: 8; also Harrison 2015). In a constant state of becoming, they reflect the mutually constitutive relationships between people and things (Edensor 2011: 249; Otero-Pailos 2016: 17; Yaneva 2008: 11). However, this chapter also reveals how conscious, meticulous “boundary work” (DeSilvey 2017: 131) is integral to delineating the object of conservation in space and time. Some of this boundary work attends to a separation of nature and culture (2017: 131; also Harrison 2015; Katz 1998), as in the removal of larger plants, algae and other biological growths. Yet, in our work, we also found “nature” being called upon for conservation purposes, as in the recognition that vegetation growth on historic walls can provide a “thermal blanket”. Furthermore, the accretion of nature and culture is also recognised as part of the “patina” of conservation objects. “Lichens can add a lot to the appreciation of the building as being one of early nineteenth century […] they tell a story in themselves”, Randall explains. In these senses, those involved in the object of conservation can be said to collaborate with non-human entities and agencies, even if in a more contained and controlled fashion than DeSilvey (2017) advocates. Other kinds of boundaries are also enacted in the delineation of the object of conservation, informing the assembly and reassembly of materials. For instance, boundaries are drawn between foundational materials, that are part of the essence of the thing, and those that are deemed sacrificial, such as mortar and varnishes. Above all, boundary work is attentive to conservation work itself, delineating the introduction of new materials and the re-arrangement of older ones through extensive and meticulous records and self-documentation. As Randall puts it, in reference to a turf-capped roof at one of the PiCs he is responsible for: “I hope it is so alien that it is obviously readable as a modern intervention”. DeSilvey eloquently argues that: “The people responsible for caring for both natural and cultural heritage often manage not recuperation but change, working with remnant ecologies and materials to produce conditions that draw on past precedents but move forward into new forms” (2017: 20). To return to the opening of this chapter, the stone conservators working on the musical angels at Linlithgow Palace brush off pollution crusts and powdered stone, dissolve old repairs and scrape or lift them off them. They also inject resin and remould carved forms with acrylic resin, reconstructing things as delicate as one of the strings on an angel’s spinet. In this, if no other way, these angels are like Benjamin’s angel from paradise, propelled into the future as hybrid forms bringing together past and present materials. Unruly forces of erosion and deterioration, as well as complex histories of modification and former campaigns of conservation, provide sources of instability and disorder that practitioners are acutely aware of. Indeed,

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it can be argued that conservation practice creates a space in which the multiplicity and instability of the object of conservation is exposed and negotiated ( Jones and Yarrow 2013; Yaneva 2008). While our arguments build on those of DeSilvey, Edensor and others in highlighting a degree of fluidity overlooked in more essentialist visions, we also wish to highlight the ethnographic sense in which their stabilisation emerges as a central, if problematic, concern alongside the recognition of the positive aspects of decay. Tracing conservation objects as they are enacted, we have revealed that different kinds of expertise produce “different forms of leverage” (Mol 2002: 155), employing different techniques and methods. Deploying often tacit multisensory, “tactile knowing”, built up through experience, the conservation practitioners discussed in this chapter “tinker” (Ravetz 1971) with scientific techniques and tools in a skilful fashion, marshalling recalcitrant materials to keep “the thing itself ” in being whilst also recognising and cultivating the patina of age. For, as Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser and Jeannette Pols observe, “[G]ood care” involves “persistent tinkering in a world full of complex ambivalence and shifting tensions” (2010: 14). In practice, diverse skilled practices lead to different kinds of entanglement, which in turn produce multiple interrelated objects of attention, concern and intervention. Accordingly, whilst much of the literature renders decay as either productive or problematic, we have attended to the more situated questions of how, when and in what ways it is “good” or “bad” to intervene. The case of the painted ceiling at Dryburgh Abbey reveals the micro-politics and ethics surrounding the question “what to do?” (Mol 2002; Otero-Pailos 2016). Sometimes, difference is aligned and resolved whereas in other contexts, like this one, it persists. In the next chapter, we return to Glasgow Cathedral to consider the ethical and political dimensions of conservation for the many different people who care for the building, as well as the perspectivalism and “stakeholder” management that frames the negotiation of whose concerns matter, when and how.

Notes 1 http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/SM13099, accessed 8 September 2021. 2 https://www.historicenvironment.scot/archives-and-research/publications/publicati on/?publicationId=ec7b44bc-f5d5-4ad3-aa28-a78c00f8e692, accessed 8 November 2017.

9 SIGNIFICANCE, FAITH AND CARE

In his office in the masons’ yard at the back of Glasgow Cathedral, the MCU manager, Alek, has an air of anxious pre-occupation. Later he explains how busy he is: “I’ve so much going on, plumbing work, electrical, getting estimates and sorting contracts”. He also mediates between HS and the various “stakeholders”. These include The Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral (hereafter the Friends), the Kirk Session (comprising the minister and elders of the parish) and the congregation. Being an important civic and national building, the Cathedral is also the site of large-scale public events, ranging from weddings and funerals, to concerts and even charitable banquets. All these impact on Alek’s already ample workload, as he is called on to assess and manage the potential risks such events pose to the building’s fabric. Meanwhile, within the Cathedral, the usual tableaux of summer tourists mill around its cavernous nave, craning to look at the windows and multi-story arcades. A large group of German tourists listens to a commercial tour guide, while smaller groups, couples and solitary figures stroll round, pausing to take photographs, or glance at explanatory signs. Others survey books and souvenirs at the HS shop situated just inside the south door, or alternative offerings arranged on tables set up by the Friends in the nave. The Friends are distinguished by their long blue robes, whilst HS stewards, now part of the burgeoning Visitor Services Team, wear corporate uniforms and name badges. The various spaces within the Cathedral produce different kinds of bodily practice and vision. Tourists intermittently chatter with their companions, falling silent as they inspect specific features. Cameras, usually on phones, frame particular architectural elements, frequently oriented upwards to windows and vaults. In the Choir, visitors talk in hushed tones, often taking a pew for contemplation and reflection, whatever their religious disposition. Some are specifically engaged DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-12

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in prayer with bowed heads, whilst those of Catholic faith can sometimes be found kneeling at St Mungo’s shrine in the crypt. Moving amongst them, HS staff and the Friends display a more proprietorial air, at times directing access and behaviour. A good deal of research over the past two to three decades has been concerned with the construction of meaning around heritage sites like the Cathedral, framed by the idea of dominant discourses that intersect with political, religious and economic interests (Harrison 2013a: 95–113). Such an analysis of Glasgow Cathedral might highlight various discourses relating to the Reformation and the modern nation-state, which have undoubtedly played a significant role in the biography of the Cathedral, including mid-twentieth-century sectarian tensions that have subsequently been subdued by more ecumenical inclinations. Another approach commonplace in critical heritage studies would be to contrast “Authorised Heritage Discourse” (AHD) underpinning the management and conservation of the Cathedral by heritage experts (Smith 2006), with the concerns and values of other actors that use the building, or express forms of attachment to it. Important though these critical strands are, they can flatten out the ethnographic complexity surrounding a place like Glasgow Cathedral. Moreover, there is a tendency for people’s rich relationships to heritage places to be framed in terms of binary distinctions that bifurcate and homogenise perspectives. As Višnja Kisic ́ points out, the literature on AHD “assumes the fault line of the order of heritage discourse as drawn between privileged experts and subaltern communities/visitors”. This, she argues, makes it “hard to differentiate the diversity of positions and dynamics of changes within and across each of these groups” (2016: 72–73). Evidently, the tensions arising from these complexities do not align in a straightforward manner with a dualistic distinction between heritage professionals and others. The Cathedral is a complex space, juxtaposing numerous interlocking worlds involving diverse actors, relations and practices. In this chapter, we focus on the “everyday dissonance” (Kisic ́ 2016: 28) routinely present at Glasgow Cathedral in the form of diverse meanings, understandings and relations, which much of the time coexist with relatively minor frictions and contestations (Waterton 2010: 7). We move beyond analytical perspectivalism, which, as Annemarie Mol (2002) argues, naturalises the idea of one world plurally perceived from different perspectives that generate dissonant understandings. Instead, we consider perspectivalism as practice, ethnographically tracing out the ideals, actions, effects and dilemmas that emerge from people’s efforts to enact a perspectival vision. In examining how perspectives are made and managed, we explore the multiplicity of what they materialise. We reveal that Glasgow Cathedral is constituted as multiple, intersecting objects of attention and concern by different people, and explore the ethics and politics of care these engender. First though, we turn to the technique of significance assessment and show how it makes a dissonant reality conform to an ordered perspectivalism.

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Assessing significance, taming dissonance Prompted by TY to reflect on what he means by care, Kevin, an HS cultural resource officer introduced earlier in the book, draws a link between understanding and significance on the one hand, and the ethics of care on the other: For me personally, I feel quite protective towards them all. They’re like my children, each one of them, you know. I shouldn’t say that, should I? But, yeah, you care about them, because you understand and appreciate their significance. […] You get quite fond of them, and I probably shouldn’t. You can see them as cold stone things that you just have to repair and make sure they don’t fall on anybody. But they have stories to tell, and they’re important to everybody really. Kevin’s acknowledgement that he thinks of the historic buildings and monuments he works with as children is illuminating in regard to the affective charge they elicit in him. It also hints at related connotations of trouble, worry and care, linked to an “endangerment sensibility” (Vidal and Dias 2016). Yet these affective and ethico-political relations, which we return to later in the chapter, are not part of the staging of significance in the Interim Statement of Significance for Glasgow Cathedral (Historic Scotland 2005a). Here, values are presented as matters of fact separated from personal, situated affective concerns, hence Kevin’s implication that his sentiments are somehow transgressive in relation to the objectivism expected of him (discussed in depth in Chapter 4). As Ireland et al. (2020: 827) argue, significance forms the basis of values-based heritage management, which has become a new orthodoxy operating across a range of specialist domains, including collecting, designating, curating, conserving and archiving. Often traced to the highly influential Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013 [1979]), significance assessment is a key stage in the heritage management process, which informs conservation decision making. In the latest version of The Burra Charter, conservation “means all the processes of looking after a place, so as to retain its cultural significance”, which in turn “means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations” (2013 [1979]: 2). Tracey Ireland, Steve Brown and John Schofield (2020) trace how these definitions and the centrality of significance assessment have been taken up in other doctrinal texts and jurisdictions within Australia and internationally (see also Poulios 2010; Smith 2006; and for the UK, Gibson and Pendlebury 2009). Nevertheless, in practice, significance “is used as a portmanteau term to ‘carry’ a melange of attributes, meanings and attachments that are perceived as encompassed by heritage places and things” (Ireland et al. 2020: 827–828). In Chapter 7, we discussed how significance assessment not only justifies investment in the ambitious 30-year HS conservation project, it also informs debates about specific physical interventions at the Cathedral. The nation looms large in the overall assessment of the its significance: “The Cathedral is closely associated

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with St Kentigern, one of the native, national patron saints of Scotland”; “The finest building in Scotland to survive from the 13th century”; “For centuries, the practicalities of the spiritual life of much of the S. of Scotland was managed from here” (Historic Scotland 2005a: 141–142). The document thus foregrounds and objectifies the importance of the Cathedral as national heritage. In interviews, these values are reiterated by HS staff as matters of fact, redolent of practiced performances in meetings, public talks and interpretative literatures. Yet fairly quickly, the overt focus on the building as an historical actor in the national story is displaced by specific forms of expert knowledge. For someone with archaeological training like Kevin, this involves “reading” the building in terms of medieval socio-material relations: [Y]ou can walk into Glasgow Cathedral today and you can understand the way that medieval pilgrimage would have worked. They can understand the way that the relics of St Kentigern influence the way that the Cathedral has been designed and formed. Visitors are inflected in the shift in pronouns, where “they” are seen as beneficiaries of what the building can reveal when mediated by specific kinds of expertise. Tom, Head of Cultural Resources and an expert in medieval pilgrimage, sums this up: “[U]nderstanding all of that, being able to communicate that understanding to our audiences, is wonderful and, you know, makes it a very much a living, and understandable, entity”. There is a circular logic to these conversations about significance. The values derived from archaeological and historical understandings inform the significance of the building, but, at the same time, its significance is seen as an index of its ability to reveal these values to others and increase their understanding in the present. Accordingly, statements of significance have an impact on the world in that “they work to create a reality they appear to describe” (Ireland et al. 2020: 833). In practice, as we will discuss, this effect is partial and limited, requiring considerable effort and active negotiation with at times recalcitrant actors who have different understandings, concerns and affective relations with the Cathedral. Significance assessment attempts to accommodate their different perspectives by breaking significance down into a range of distinct value categories. In the case of the Glasgow Cathedral Statement of Significance (Historic Scotland 2005a) these include historical, archaeological, artistic/architectural, social, spiritual and aesthetic values. The first three are primarily seen as values deriving from the past, whereas the latter three are associated with recent historical and/or contemporary perspectives. Accordingly, the architectural components highlighted are valued for their relationship to historical actors, events and practices, almost entirely medieval ones. More broadly, the Cathedral is seen to have aesthetic value as “an imposing and dignified presence”, despite the ways in which its setting is said to be “compromised” by the looming presence of the Royal Infirmary

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and the motorway to the North (2005a: 141). Its social and spiritual values are more anecdotal, reflecting the dearth of specific research routinely devoted to these categories in conservation and management ( Jones 2017).1 The Cathedral’s social value is attributed to its role as a setting for community life, civic events and artistic activities, whereas its spiritual value is said to encompass both Catholic and Presbyterian worship, as well as state religious events, such as the funeral of Donald Dewar, the inaugural First Minister of Scotland (2005a: 140). Significance thus emerges as a composite of distinct but intersecting values in the process of assessment. Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan characterise it as a “magical technique” that performs the “important function of giving order in the face of something that is experienced as messy and awkward” (2018b: 21). As a technique ostensibly founded on the recognition of distinct, plural values, it allows not merely for the recognition of different perspectives, but their orchestration. Its “magic” lies in its ability to marshal diverse, dissonant meanings under distinct value categories that produce a kind of objectivism, transforming them into objects detached from the subjectivities in which they originate. Accordingly, it renders values amenable to appraisal and differentiation in an apparently evenhanded manner, where they are equal in principle but can be weighed up against each other in a seemingly objective way. Although levels of importance are not integral in the sense that they are for designation, those “key points” highlighted in the summary assessment often reflect designation thresholds, not least because those involved often have experience of designation and regulation. However, as we see in the case of Glasgow Cathedral, various contradictions and ambivalences play out. Not least of these is the persistent notion that some values (historical, evidential and to some extent aesthetic ones) are intrinsic to the building, whereas others are extrinsic (spiritual and social values). In the former sense, the building is seen to be a source of inherent values, revealed by specific kinds of disciplinary expertise. In the latter sense, values are seen as subsequently ascribed to the building by various communities of interest and attachment. Concomitantly, intrinsic values are seen as fundamental and durable, if not timeless, whereas extrinsic values are often regarded as changeable and even capricious. Angela, another member of the Cultural Resources Team, this time with a background in history, grapples with these tensions in the following interview extract: [T]he cultural significance for me, mostly comes from the architectural significance, the historical significance, the archaeological significance, the things that wrap up to say, ‘why is this monument important to us?’. And part of that is, yes, the social significance. [….. But] if you predicate everything on the social significance or the modern social significance, there’s more risk of you losing the architectural or the archaeological and historical, whereas if you focus on the architecture and what have you, you’ve got more chance of enhancing the social significance, because you’re really getting to understand the monument and it’s place in history and how it

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has effected and been effected by the key events in the nation’s history and […] you can go out to people and say, ‘look this monument that’s in your backyard played a key role in [for instance] the Wars of Independence’. In Angela’s candid account, she reveals how some values, seen as intrinsic, historical ones, are privileged over modern social values, framed by the idea of what a monument contributes to understandings of the nation’s past. Summing up her reflections she also highlights the circularity and associated tensions, specifically the sense that social values constitute some kind of unspecified threat: “So, by focusing on the architectural, historical, archaeological, we can enhance the social, but if we focus just on the social there’s perhaps more risk of losing the other aspects of significance”. Little research is carried out on social values in and of themselves in the context of heritage management and conservation ( Jones 2010); in addition to the lack of expertise and resources, they are seen by many as values that should derive from historical and archaeological values. Furthermore, when a statement of significance is used to inform decisions about specific conservation interventions, it is primarily historic and evidential values that are mobilised in the process of negotiation. Consequently, significance assessment is productive of the values it purports to describe, creating a seductive order from an unruly assemblage of people and things (Macdonald and Morgan 2018b: 21).

“Stone speaks”: faith and spirituality in a living building Helen, a long-standing member of both the congregation and the Friends, describes herself as “born and brought up in the Church of Scotland”. As a child, she had attended the local family church in Springburn, but through a close friend she had found herself attending the Cathedral services and at age 19 she joined the choir. In her early 60s when interviewed by TY, she reflects on her life with the Cathedral: “I much preferred the service here. I liked the dignity and the formality, and I loved the music”. Her religious experience is also intimately related to the building: “I don’t think you can separate really the building from the purpose it was built for, because it was designed for that purpose. She reflects on what it would be without religious worship and concludes that “it would just be a shell, […] a beautiful shell”. In her book, Sacred Heritage (2020), Roberta Gilchrist argues that heritage management imposes a secularising framework onto medieval ecclesiastical buildings. Drawing on Keith Emerick (2014), she points out that the notion of a monument as a “document” to be read resulted in a generic presentation of medieval ecclesiastical buildings as part of the national story, despite the centrality of religion to their existence (2020: 17, 176–187). This is partly, she argues, a product of the prominence of secularist, humanising disciplines like archaeology and history, which have been integral to the production of national(ist) narratives. These disciplines play a prominent role in Glasgow Cathedral’s Statement of Significance, as elsewhere. It outlines a chronological list of key events, focusing on

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major phases and associated individuals (popes, bishops and national figures, such as Donald Dewar). This is followed by a summary of archaeological investigations, which themselves are singled out as significant, being “the most extensive published excavations undertaken in any Scottish cathedral” (Historic Scotland 2005a: 142). The practice of pilgrimage is regarded as particularly significant, but even St Kentigern (Mungo) is turned into a national and civic patron saint. Ongoing patronage of the saint is highlighted and there is a brief acknowledgement that the Cathedral has played a role in the ongoing “spiritual lives of generations of townsfolk” after the Reformation. Yet the significance of the Cathedral’s post-Reformation protestant congregations is ultimately transposed into how their presence has secured its preservation: “Its reuse for Presbyterian worship following the Reformation, ensured the future conservation of the great church” (2005a: 142). Thus, in terms of what it is and how it matters, the Statement of Significance turns the Cathedral into an object of national heritage in the present, whilst simultaneously reconfiguring its sacred and spiritual dimensions in relation to a pre-modern past. In this sense, as Denis Byrne argues, heritage practice “transposes old things and locales into the public sphere, secularizing them along the way” (2014: 54). Yet, just as heritage places in China and other Asian countries continue to hold supernatural agency for Byrne’s popular religion devotees, ecclesiastical buildings and monuments in Europe remain active agents in matters of faith, spirituality and affective responses to the numinous (Foster and Jones 2019; Gilchrist 2020; Shackley 2002). Accordingly, for some, Glasgow Cathedral is inextricably linked with faith, acting both as an embodiment of their own faith and that of others. A related idea, of importance to many congregation members, is of the building as a literalisation of a community of faith both in time and in space. Anne, a member of the congregation for over 30 years, explains that her Christian faith is absolutely fundamental to her life and talks repeatedly of the “gathered congregation” as a community of faith. She also describes how she feels a strong “sense of worship” in the building, “something special” arising from “the fact that Christian faith has been carried out in this building for all this great length of time”. This is echoed by Gordon, another long-standing congregation member whose late father had been a Church of Scotland minister and who is also active in the Friends as a guide. He explains that: [B]ecause it’s been here for hundreds of years and people have worshipped in it for hundreds of years and sat in the pews and so on, you feel like you’re part of a continuing tradition, you know, which is important”. For Christian worshippers, the building is also attributed agency, mediating their sense of faith and eliciting affective responses, despite longstanding denial in Protestant doctrine of the divine efficacy and vibrant qualities of things. Mark, a Church of Scotland minister, talks about how the Cathedral’s “architecture is imbued with this sense of a call to worship, [and] of the numinous”, and how it instils an “attitude of preparation for worship”. Helen, who describes herself as a practical rather imaginative person, also elaborates on how:

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The sense of space gives you the sense of the grandeur of God and what you’re doing, something that you could never achieve yourself or describe yourself, or even imagine. […] [T]he roof height and the way everything’s leading your eyes upwards […]. So, although you’re far down, if you like, and small but not insignificant, you’re still actually looking up into all the space all the time. Here, Helen’s articulation of how the Cathedral elicits an affective response and a relationship to God, intersects with that of Bruce, one of the conservation architects, who explains through his disciplinary gaze how the design is “[A]ll about going up to God, you know […] it’s all supposed to lead the eye up to the heavens”. More generally, people talk of the Cathedral as providing a peaceful, restful space where you can leave the “fripperies”, “pressures” and “distractions” of life behind; a shelter, refuge or sanctuary at times of stress or trouble (compare Gilchrist 2020: 22). Helen, again, elaborates on this in a particularly evocative fashion: [Y]ou come in and there’s this big space and whatever’s been crowding in on your life and pressing you down and giving you headaches and making your mind run away on wheels, suddenly there’s absolutely nothing round about you and yards and yards of vaulting, big wide space and it’s solid. It’s not something flighty and ephemeral, it’s good solid grey stone. It’s not going to go away, it’s not going to fall in on you, and you’ve just got room to expand and let go of everything that’s stuck inside or go and throw it to God or something. Chuck it away. You’ve got room to breathe. Such responses are by no means restricted to those of Christian faith (compare Badone 2015; Foster and Jones 2019; Gilchrist 2020; Voyé 2012). Those of agnostic or atheistic persuasion also recognise that Glasgow Cathedral draws out forms of spiritual reflection. In these accounts, it is explicitly afforded an agency, construed as a powerful presence that acts on people in a range of ways. It has a capacity to elicit thoughts, emotions and relationships that impact on people’s state of being, temporarily at least, and potentially make them into different kinds of people. Its affective qualities draw out particular sensory responses, and its vast space conjures a sense of awe and the numinous. For many, the importance of the building seems to inhere as a space apart that takes them outside a more everyday set of concerns, problems and distractions. In making these more immediate demands recede, the building actively makes space for other kinds of thought and emotion that are afforded a sense of profundity (compare Calvert’s (2017) ethnographic account of Durham Cathedral). Myra Shackley (2002: 350–351) argues that a cathedral can act as a kind of “heterotopia” in Michel Foucault’s (1986) terms: a space that juxtaposes a range of disjunctive imaginative possibilities. Frequently associated with ritual practice,

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Foucault argued that heterotopias are spaces of otherness and difference that generate reflection and suspend, invert or contest everyday life. This resonates with the sense of a place apart that people articulate in relation to Glasgow Cathedral, because a heterotopia is, in Foucault’s (1986: 15) words, “a sort of place that lies outside all places and yet is actually localizable”. It is also both timeless and simultaneously productive of “timefullness” (Shackley 2002: 250). Shackley points out that “part of the mystery of a cathedral as heterotopia is its otherness, its removal from the world of time constraints and commerce” (2002: 251), something that resonates with people’s sense of Glasgow Cathedral as a “sanctuary” from the outside world. There is also a link between the volume of space, and the freedom to think in expansive ways about more profound things; “you’re not hemmed in”. For Foucault, “heterotopias” can also mutate through time encapsulating both discontinuity and accumulation, capturing the way faith is seen to accumulate, creating a sense of connection regardless of upheavals like the Reformation. We have seen how material, architectural and atmospheric properties are integral to the Cathedral’s agency in eliciting affective and metaphysical responses: the high roof draws up the eye and elicits contemplation; the space creates feelings of peace and tranquillity; the music elevates the spirit and, for those of Christian faith, glorifies God. It also conjures a sense of solidity, of something permanent, unchanging and solid, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Above all, it embodies positive understandings of continuity; as one congregation member put it, “the rocks remain”, seeing the solidity of the structure as a timeless counterpart to the transformation of the world around. At the same time, faith is integral to the enactment of the Cathedral and its materiality: without a congregation engaged in active worship, the Cathedral would become, in Helen’s words, an “empty shell”. Later in the same interview, perhaps influenced by the 25 years she spent singing in the choir, she elaborates, “I think what goes on in a building somehow seeps into the stonework and it builds up an atmosphere” (compare Calvert 2017). So just as the Cathedral can make those that engage with it into different kinds of people, it is people – and specifically the practice of worship – that make the Cathedral into the kind of place it is. This mutually constitutive relationship is captured by Margaret, a Glasgow resident of Catholic faith who visits the Cathedral from time to time. “I know it’s just stone”, she says a little selfconsciously, “but I think it absorbs things, it’s like it’s alive […] It’s absorbed the presence of the people who’ve been here in the past. […] Just remember, stone speaks”. Accordingly, the accumulation of faith in the very fabric of the Cathedral speaks back to people and becomes an integral aspect of its agency in mediating experiences and relationships. HS employees involved in the management and conservation of Glasgow Cathedral acknowledge the importance of ongoing worship. As Tom, Head of the Cultural Resources Team puts it, they take a “different philosophic approach” to its management and conservation, because “it’s a living church”. He goes on to explain that, “[T]he ongoing life of worship is what the place is, it’s the whole

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reason that it’s there, and […] that means allowing change in a way in which we wouldn’t in other instances”. Yet he and others acknowledge the challenges this creates, which are arguably a product of competing conservation logics (Poulios 2010). As we have discussed, the secularising practice of significance assessment primarily locates significance in relation to the past. The surviving architectural form is seen to create a legibility that helps visitors to engage with its medieval past. Present-day spiritual and social values are acknowledged, but are seen as extrinsic to the building itself and potentially a source of risk, even whilst such “intangible” aspects are also viewed as contributing to its protection (and see Poulios 2010: 174). Perhaps most importantly, values-based charters and conventions like the Burra Charter (1979 [2013]) and the Faro Convention (2005) create forms of contradiction and incoherence, because they tend to build on the canonical Venice Charter (1964) with its overriding emphasis on preservation of fabric (Kisic ́ 2016; Poulios 2010; Waterton et al. 2006). The result is that approaches focusing on conservation of fabric and significance “often overlap both in practice and rhetoric” (Kisic ́ 2016: 76), creating tensions for all concerned. The Minister of the Cathedral, Alisdair, is at great pains to emphasise the “good working relationship” he and the Kirk Session have with HS and that the friendly “custodians always do their very best for you”. However, he also acknowledges tensions: “[I]n terms of the freedom that the Minister has, that’s where the issues arise”. With a twinkle in his eye, he offers a satirical account of the “very strong strictures” he faces: No red wine, because that stains, if it’s white wine it mustn’t be sticky white wine! […] I once had some dancers to celebrate St Mungo’s day and, before I could stop them, in the rehearsal they went behind the pillars, this was in the nave, put on tap shoes, came out and did a tap dance. Well! You can imagine! But, again, I mean, they’re not even medieval flagstones, but there was an enormous hoo hah about that and the letter I got was two pages long. The tap-dancing incident was a stock tale for all concerned with looking after Glasgow Cathedral, retold in different ways, to speak to both care and lack of care. However, the Minister’s wry account also highlights concerns that are central to those involved in the spiritual life of the Cathedral. Ben, a senior figure in the Kirk Session, stresses that they have symbolic and spiritual ramifications as well as practical ones. He takes up the issue of candles, explaining that “we’re firmly involved in the use of candles within the liturgy”, but the Kirk have been under pressure not to use lit wax candles in the Cathedral: “[L]ast Christmas Eve we didn’t use candles… quite a terrible thing and a lot of the congregation were quite upset about that”. He notes that by next Christmas, they will have replaced the wax candles with electric ones, but there are situations where lighting a wax candle is “so symbolic that we feel that we just have to use them, a candle lit for a death, a candle lit in memorial”.

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The problem of candles is to do with how their materiality intersects with their symbolic dimensions. The accretions of wax contribute to the aura of the building and the faith it embodies, whilst simultaneously being seen as a source of risk to the fabric of the building in conservation terms. Relatedly, the Minister provides an amusing anecdote about material traces: One of my elders said to me something quite funny, if coffee, or whatever, was spilt on the flagstones, in a hundred years’ time, someone would say, ‘come and look at this, wow, to think that’s a coffee spill from a hundred years ago, imagine that!’. Projecting themselves into the future is a common trope amongst those who live with Glasgow Cathedral. It is a means to see themselves as others will see them, but also to situate themselves as part of the heritage of the building. It is not confined to those who are active in the spiritual life of the building, with masons, and sometimes architects, engaged in similar projections, albeit framed in differing ways (see Chapter 7). However, whilst often cloaked in humour, expressions of continuity are usually indicative of more serious undercurrents, as in the case of the Minister’s tale of coffee stains. Reflecting on it, he concludes: “[I]t must be an alive building, if it’s not alive then it’s just a museum and it’s got to be used. So, there’s enormous tension […] between preservation and life”.

Managing stakeholders Reflecting on their “partnership working” at Glasgow Cathedral, both Tom and Kevin from the Cultural Resources Team, are keen to explain the complex relations between the different stakeholder groups as they see it. Tom talks of what he sees as a kind of “triumvirate” made up of themselves, the Kirk Session and the Friends, which “makes life quite interesting”. Kevin in turn links these stakeholders to what he sees as their roles: There’s the Kirk Session, who basically run the Cathedral as a church. They manage all of that. There are the Friends of Glasgow Cathedral, a very large group, […] who have an interest in the Cathedral, and they help to greet visitors to the Cathedral and guide them around and help to run the Cathedral in that sort of way. These two stakeholder groups are “very much involved inside the building”, Kevin explains, but there is also a long list of other parties with a stake in the place: the City Council, including, “Planning, Regeneration, Museums, because we’ve got St Mungo’s [Museum of Religious Life and Art] on the doorstep”; The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis, located to the east of the Cathedral; people who organise events in the building, or perform in it, and so forth. Many of these stakeholders are brought together in six-monthly “partnership” meetings,

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chaired by the HS regional architect, the aim of which is to increase mutual understanding and clarify purpose and roles. As a consequence, Kevin explains, “we’re understanding better what the Kirk Session are trying to achieve, and they’re understanding what we’re trying to achieve and we’re working more closely together as a partnership”. Whilst those involved single Glasgow Cathedral out as distinctive, because it is “living church” with an active congregation, the importance of stakeholders also reflects wider developments in heritage management (Poulios 2010; Waterton 2010). It is part of the shift towards what Kisic ́ (2016) and others (e.g. Emerick 2014; Schofield 2014) have referred to as a more “inclusive” or “democratic” approach, though they also highlight that the realisation of these ideals is limited and fragmented (also see Waterton 2010). Nevertheless, from international conventions to national strategies and policies, there is increasing emphasis on people’s relationships to heritage, framed by concepts like democracy, rights, inclusion, accessibility, diversity, participation and dialogue (Kisic ́ 2016: 73). Central to this is recognition of, and respect for, plurality in the form of multiple communities with multiple perspectives, which in turn generate multiple meanings and values around heritage places. In these frameworks, the role of heritage professionals becomes less about their historical expertise per se and more about the orchestration of forms of governance relating to assemblages of diverse communities and associated values (Poulios 2010: 172–174). The kind of academic perspectivalism that Mol (2002: 10) identifies in the social sciences is also integral to this new discourse of heritage governance. Taken to its logical conclusion it turns heritage professionals and the people who are attached to heritage places, into equals. Consequently, as de la Torre puts it: “The search is on for an approach that assures equity, avoiding those [approaches] in which the values that prevail belong to the group with the most political power” (2005: 5). In practice, whilst perspectivalism is very much in evidence amongst those involved in Glasgow Cathedral, it is also deployed in partial, ambivalent and at times conflicted ways. Furthermore, as Iannis Poulios (2010: 172–173) argues, there is still a gathering of power produced by HS’s attempts to co-ordinate perspectives, albeit limited in its effects, as we shall see. Asked about different people’s attitudes to Glasgow Cathedral, Kevin provides an explicit rendering of such perspectivalism: I think there’s no right and wrong about this, but different folk will see the Cathedral in different ways. Some of our stakeholders view the Cathedral primarily as a working church, and that’s the way they would explain it to a visitor. Perhaps myself and my colleagues are more inclined to see it as a building first and foremost. An historic building with its own particular character, and we’ll maybe delve more into the historical side […] than your average visitor. So, there are many different perspectives one might come to Glasgow Cathedral with. All of which are valid and interesting

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and all of which you can learn from. We have to bear them in mind when we’re talking to various stakeholders. Understanding these perspectives is explicitly about managing them. Susan, Head of Conservation and Maintenance in 2010, emphasises that they are “a very active congregation” and “we need to work with them so that our management of it doesn’t impinge on them and their use of it doesn’t impinge on our management”. Relatedly, Tom explains that, “something we have spent a lot of time doing over the last ten years has been defining these roles to make people’s lives easier”. Later in the same interview, he reflects that, “by and large, I think [it] has been quite successful and I think, you know, there is a clearer understanding, sympathy or empathy, for each other’s position as well, but nevertheless respecting those distinctive roles”. Whilst the language of perspective is less prevalent, people who make up the main “stakeholder” groups also have a keen awareness of distinct understandings, interests and agendas. For instance, Ann, an active member of the congregation, explains, “I think the Friends see themselves as a non-denominational group and they’re probably more concerned about the Cathedral as an ancient monument”. Then she qualifies this, noting that: “[T]here are several of us that are members of the Cathedral congregation but we’re also members of the Friends and so see it from a slightly different point of view”. Meanwhile, Ben, a prominent figure in the Kirk Session, explains that: “I think we are just as twitchy as, you know, the people in Historic Scotland about things being spilled on the stonework where it can’t be removed”. Yet whilst acknowledging “that stone needs to be preserved in some form”, he also highlights their differing perspectives, which come down to “whether that’s a static preservation or a dynamic preservation”. Ultimately, reflecting on what these different perspectives mean, he concludes that it is about “how you blend them together, yeah, without them bumping into each other”. Separating perspectives and roles, however, is not straightforward and we have seen already how these tend to “bump into each other”. Kevin explains that HS’s role is to “conserve the fabric of the building to maintain it, to manage it, to protect it really for future generations […] that is our essential remit”. He acknowledges that this can come down to managing the “micro-detail” of activities inside the Cathedral to avoid damage to the fabric. Aside, from food and drink and candles, musical performances and concerts can also become a focus of negotiation. In the early to mid-2000s, the Cathedral nave had become a popular venue for concerts, including Celtic Connections festival events. The installation of all the equipment had become a “big headache” involving the masons in the MCU and the HS stewards in lots of extra work. There had also been some damage, so they stopped the concerts. But, Tom observes, “it was really interesting when we all [the stakeholders] came together to question it, we all agreed that actually this was really inappropriate content, you know”. By contrast, he highlights an early music performance “appropriate to the liturgy of the cathedral in the medieval period”, which was “just absolutely wonderful”.

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In such cases, decisions are therefore as much about the “appropriateness” of an activity to the Cathedral as they are about avoiding physical damage or intervention. Sometimes there is an alignment of views, even if the underlying logics are different. At other times, they diverge, as with the Friends’ desire for more interior plaques and memorials, which are regarded by HS as just more “clutter” in an already cluttered space. Often, for the HS cultural resource officers and architects this involves compromise, “making a judgement on what we can live with”. But it is also about coordinating and negotiating perspectives. Poulios argues that, in a values-based approach to management: The coordination of, and responsibility over, the overall conservation and management process is in the hands of a strong managing authority. It is this authority that identifies the stakeholder groups, records, measures, and prioritizes their values, decides what stakeholders and values to protect, and how to involve the stakeholders in the implementation phase. (2010: 173) There is certainly a sense in which HS attempt to orchestrate this kind of stakeholder management. As Kevin puts it, [W]e’d liaise with all of those [involved], to see if we meet their requirements, if they’re appropriate, and also to discuss with them how best they can do what they want to do, as long as they respect the monument. Yet, even though HS staff can draw a line, for the most part, in regard to what happens with the fabric of the building, the complexity of the socio-material relations involved means that their power is in a very real sense partial and limited. This is particularly evident when it comes to who does what with visitors.

Mediating the “tourist gaze” The “tourist gaze”– embodied ways of seeing mediated by specific representations, performances and technologies (Urry and Larsen 2011) – is regarded by all concerned with the Cathedral as something that needs to be managed and tutored (Figure 9.1). Showing us round the Cathedral early in our fieldwork, Pat, an HS interpretation manager, explains to us that it would be good “to do a complete overhaul of the presentation involving all the main stakeholders”. On the one hand, there are lots of really interesting stories that are not being told, he explains, and on the other, there is a lot of “clutter”, disparate signage and information created at different times and two welcome desks/shops (one HS and one Friends). Consequently, there is a danger of different sources of information creating “mixed messages”, but, with a resigned look, he acknowledges that it is not an easy task to “disentangle it all”.

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FIGURE 9.1 

Tourists in the nave of Glasgow Cathedral (S. Jones).

Pat and his team have recently produced a new HS guidebook and created temporary interpretation panels for the hoardings surrounding the scaffold outside the southwest entrance. It is important to explain the work they are doing on the building to visitors, Pat explains, but they have also taken the opportunity to say something about the history of the Cathedral. This takes the form of a timeline on the interpretation panels, which picks up on some of the guidebook themes. The Cathedral is presented as evidence for medieval religion and pilgrimage, combined with a prominent national narrative. John Slezer’s (1693) engraving from Theatrum Scotiae is presented as key historical evidence, revealing its architectural form prior to nineteenth-century modifications. Other imagery serves to create a Romantic aesthetic, set alongside quotes from Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. Dates on the timeline pick out destructive influences, both natural and cultural, in the form of lightning, Reformation, iconoclasm and industrial pollution. Alongside these, there are redemptive influences, such as the defence of the Cathedral by the House of Trades, the transfer to state care and the current conservation project.

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Despite these recent efforts to intervene in the presentation of the Cathedral, the situation regarding public interpretation is still problematic for many in HS. In an “ideal world”, Tom says, there would be a “rationalisation of who does what with visitors”. The Kirk Session are responsible for “the ecclesiastical life of the Cathedral present and future”, whereas HS is responsible for its conservation and interpretation. But, he says, the Friends of Glasgow Cathedral “complicate things further, [because] they have a kind of overlapping role with us in terms of the [visitor] services management which is quite unusual”. Tom elaborates: “[W]e have got no control over that, you know, what are they [the Friends guides] saying, what [do] visitors come away with?”. It is also, he feels, confusing for visitors, because “people see HS staff […] and then they see the people in the [blue] robes [the Friends guides], we have a guidebook, they have guidebook, we have a postcard, they have a postcard, it’s not good”. Tom’s colleague, Kevin, is more relaxed about the situation. Although he acknowledges it is “complicated”, he stresses that in his view “there’s scope for different styles and formats”. As a means to rationalise this, he mobilises perspectivalism: It’s rather nice I think that when people arrive at the Cathedral, they’re offered a bit of a tour, and the volunteer guides impart their own knowledge, which tends to be along the lines of interior fittings and furnishings. And, on the other hand, if they’re interested in the building as a historical monument, they might be better picking up the HS guidebook. […] People can pick and choose a little bit and they will all come with their own perspectives. Nevertheless, HS have made gentle attempts to influence the content of the Friends’ tours. The HS Interpretation Team had organised a workshop to teach guiding skills, but Tom concedes that most of the volunteers are retired and not very interested in training: “I suspect, you know, the lady who wants to just talk about a particular aspect of the church in the nineteenth century [then] that’s still what you get on your tour”. Campbell, a member of both the congregation and the Friends, counters this view with a different, self-consciously authoritative account. As an architectural historian, he explains, “I obviously knew a great deal about the building and perhaps even more importantly I knew everybody else who would know anything about the building”. So, when they introduced volunteer guides, he decided “we’d better inform them”. Campbell reels off an esteemed list of professors and other experts who have contributed to the Friends’ Winter Lecture Series. Heather, who is on the Guides Committee, acknowledges that the Winter Lectures provide the guides with historical knowledge, but at the same time observes: “people won’t remember the dates, but they will remember a nice friendly person that gave us a nice welcome”. New guides get an interview and a tour, she explains, and “we give them copies of the [Friends’] guidebook and all the notes for them to study, and we get them to shadow existing guides. That’s the main thing”.

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Regardless of these differing attempts to inculcate them, the Friends remain an unruly influence, whose passions and agendas shape their tours. Asked whether they deliver a standard tour, Heather says: [N]o, definitely not. The idea is that each guide puts their own personality into what they do. For instance, I will always point out a very small window in the lower church because it relates to Robert Louis Stevenson, that’s one of my interests. I’m sure nobody else bothers. But other people… Maureen was talking earlier about this brass that she always [includes]… I’ve never shown anybody that because it’s not something that particularly interests me. Yet explaining why she took up guiding, she sets out a more concrete agenda, not without political resonances: [T]he history of the Cathedral parallels the history of the city and the history of the country in a lot of ways. […] I think an awful lot of people here have no idea about the history and culture of this country. Understanding the Reformation is a particular preoccupation for Heather: “[W]hether you’re Protestant or Catholic or Atheist or whatever, the Reformation is very important in making Scotland the country it turned out to be and you should at least know what it was”. As Jonas Larsen (2014: 306) points out, John Urry’s (1990) use of Foucault’s work in the first edition of his book was influential in situating the “tourist gaze” as a product of “institutional mediation by ‘expert gazes’ within which spectacle and surveillance intersect and power-knowledge relations are played out”. Similarly, scholars in critical heritage studies have seen knowledge-power relations at the heart of the dynamic between heritage professionals, stakeholders and wider publics (e.g. Poulios 2010; Smith 2006). For instance, Emma Waterton (2010: 99) argues that experts “are assumed to hold the legitimate position of authority for asserting control over heritage, particularly in terms of arbitrating which meanings and values become socially permissible and socially relevant”. Undeniably knowledge-power relations are at stake in the management and interpretation of Glasgow Cathedral, but these are manifested in complex, situated performances. Those involved use forms of perspectivalism to orchestrate specific roles, values and agendas, in order that these can be differentiated and where necessary aligned in the daily life of the Cathedral. Yet these perspectives do not bifurcate in a straightforward opposition between professionals and stakeholders. Tourists, in turn, are subjected to a kind of double perspectivalism, where their own diverse perspectives are regarded by the various stakeholders as something to be shaped and moulded.

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Care and its ethico-political relations Early on in our fieldwork, John, an experienced mason, takes us to see the problems they are dealing with from the scaffold. Equipped with hard hats, flash jackets and steel toe-capped boots, we are slightly bemused when he starts with a tour of the interior. Adopting a proprietorial demeanour, he strides across the Cathedral nave with a confidence and purpose that sets him out from the surrounding tourists. Gesturing to the welcome desk of the Friends, he says “they think it’s theirs” and then with a grin he gestures to the HS logo on his shirt, alluding to the authority and access this lends him. “They don’t really know about it like we do”, he states. As if to emphasise this, John unlocks the entrance to a stairwell that is out of bounds to most. We then proceed to other parts of the building, John intermittently, and with a hint of unease, performing the role of a conventional tour guide. Back in the publicly accessible parts of the building, we visit the display of decorative stones unearthed during archaeological excavations and pause at the House of Trades’ stained-glass window, which elicits an account of how stonemasons had attempted to protect the Cathedral from damage during the Reformation. Nevertheless, the window fails to invoke in John the palpable sense of connection and care he expresses in relation to cutting stone. On returning to the nave, we ask John what he finds most impressive about the Cathedral and he responds: Aye, pretty much these he says [gesturing to the pillars], just their mass and the getting it right and the layout and you know the consistency […] the frivolous things they’re by the by […] it’s the massive scale that gets us. John evokes a particular way of seeing the building, pared down to what he calls “pure geometry, pure maths”, with all the decorative features stripped away. In this way, he focuses on what for him are the fundamentals; the solidity of the building, its load-bearing elements, the distribution of forces and the way in which the vaults enabled medieval masons to go up and up. He is keen to juxtapose this with the gaze of the architect, which from his perspective is all about surfaces and aesthetic design. Then, nodding in the direction of the Friends’ desk, he says “it’s all about stained glass and cushions with them”. John’s tour involves a seemingly practiced performance undercutting knowledge-power relations. However, the relative importance that he accords to different ways of seeing the Cathedral is also a product of his apprenticeship in a “community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991). In Chapter 7, we drew on Grasseni’s (2004) concept of “skilled vision”, an embodied, trained sensoriality, to explore the different practices involved in the HS conservation work. Different kinds of “skilled vision” do not merely construct different perspectives on the Cathedral, but rather materially enact it as a different kind of object. Here, we extend the argument by suggesting that the Cathedral is not just a “matter of fact” for the array of actors who engage with it. Rather it is a “matter of concern” in

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Bruno Latour’s (2008) terms, a fragile gathering of entangled concerns. Unlike “matters of fact”, “matters of concern” do not just endure unattended to, rather they “have to be kept up, cared for, accompanied, restored, duplicated, saved, yes, saved” (2008: 49; emphasis in original). As María Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) argues, matters of concern are therefore linked to affective connotations of trouble, worry and particularly care, seen as the active practical side of dealing with matters of concern. The forms of skilled vision and practice brought together in the HS conservation project can therefore be seen as a response to a particular gathering of entangled concerns and the practical forms of care they engender. Assessment of significance, production of architectural drawings and enactment of enduring principles of stonemasonry, for instance, are all ways of assembling the building in terms of “matters of concern”, as well as ways of practically attending to them. But can this insight be extended to others involved in maintaining and looking after the interior of the building? Are they also engaged in particular ways of knowing and enacting the Cathedral? The Friends was established with the objective of “care of the Cathedral and its preservation for posterity”. A non-religious society of friends founded by the late Very Revd Neville Davidson, in 1936, it maintains an association with the congregation, even though the number of members active in both has diminished and the Friends include people motivated by historical and architectural interests, as much as religious ones. Aside from their welcome desk and guided tours, the work of the Friends involves adornment and furnishing, installation of stained glass, and “safeguarding of the amenity of the Cathedral and the beautifying of its surroundings”. Projects like the Millennium Window and the St Kentigern Tapestry are specific sources of pride, but they also support general refurbishment, such as reinstatement of the Blacader Isle as a site of worship, and “decoration and furnishing of the Chapter House”. The symbolism of the Millennium Window and the St Kentigern Tapestry are key points for didactic explication in the Friends’ guided tours. Beautification through aesthetic works like stained glass windows is seen as befitting of the building and its role in the glorification of God. New lighting is sponsored with the intention of enhancing “the splendour of the vaulting and the arches”. All of these activities are motivated by a logic of care, as Helen highlights when she explains that they commission “embellishments” like paintings, music and glass, “so that it fits this century as well as all the previous centuries”. Just as with heritage conservation professionals, these practices of care enacted by the Friends entail particular kinds of skilled, embodied ways of seeing and knowing. For Helen and others like her, this takes the form of a religiously-informed attention to symbolism and aesthetics. However, there is also a more profound relation between these practices of care and the mutually constitutive relations between the building and people. This is evident in the ways in which they work to enhance specific kinds of sensory and affective qualities that are integral to the way the building draws out certain kinds of religious/spiritual responses. Earlier in the chapter, we discussed

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the constraints on use of candles and the ways in which this is seen to impact on the powerful spiritual agency they embody, specifically in the act of lighting them. Another example is the way in which stained glass contributes to the materialisation of the Cathedral as a ‘vibrant place of worship’. Walter, a member of the congregation, explains that “light is an important thing”. From the outside at night, the windows are “like beacons” in the dark, whereas in the day “the sun splits the stained-glass windows and […] you can see the light just dazzling the building and […] and it’s almost like windows to heaven, windows to heaven”. Above all, adding to the Cathedral contributes to the life of the building, “keeping it alive and growing and moving on”, as Helen puts it. Here accumulation of faith is once again central, as explained by Anne, who is active in the Linen and Fabrics Committee. Much of what they do, she says, consists of washing and ironing the linen, “so it’s very practical”. She says it is important work, although it is “the kind of thing we all take for granted”. They also “have an association with the Embroiderers Guild and they maintain things but also, from time to time, make new things”, such as Communion table covers and the pulpit falls, which are “magnificent”. They add colour and signify the liturgical year and changing seasons. Reflecting further on their importance, Anne says she thinks they make it “more of a living church than just the bare stone”. I think the fact that the soft furnishings, well, give it a softness I suppose, and emphasise the fact that there is a living congregation there. […] And this is part of a sense of worship. […] It’s the fact that the stone is very ancient and, I mean, that’s obviously very important, and that goes on forever […] whereas the soft furnishings, erm, reflect the fact that, you know, people actually worship here [now] on a regular basis, and this is part of the worship. In articulating what soft furnishings and other embellishments “do”, both Anne and Helen make an explicit connection between activities that involve adding to the building and its ongoing life. Parallels can be drawn with Byrne’s religious devotees in southeast Asia who “favour the piling up of fabric on fabric, renovation on renovation” (2014: 4), albeit according to a rather different logic. They are, he argues, “constant builders” (2014: 206) engaged in practices that should be seen as forms of care (Byrne 2020). For members of the Cathedral’s congregation, adding to the building and embellishing it also serves to maintain it as an embodiment of faith. These practices are forms of care in its broadest sense, defined as “everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair ‘our world’ in order to live in it as well as possible” (Tronto 1993: 103). More specifically, the ways in which people attend to, and add to, the Cathedral involves the combination of intimacy, connection and feeling that Puig de la Bellacasa refers to as “affectionate knowing” (2017: 62–63). People who live with Glasgow Cathedral reflect on the familiarity of the place, of its shape and light and smell. They also recount how it is entangled with their lives, childhoods, marriages, families and

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friends, leading to a sense of connection and commitment. Such forms of “affectionate knowing” also generate “ethical obligation” (2017: 43). As Helen puts it: “You don’t own the building, you’re really just a trustee of it, but you’re doing your wee bit because somebody’s going to come after you and this place is going to keep standing and it’s going to be here”. The ethical obligations of caring for the Cathedral are therefore evident amongst those who live with it, in the sense that, as Puig de la Bellacasa (2017: 43) puts it “we must take care of things in order to be responsible for their becomings”. Furthermore, care is reciprocal and relational, as argued by Arthur Kleinman (2012) in his discussion of end-of-life care. Relatedly, we argue that care is tied up with the way the Cathedral is enacted and materialised through faith and worship, but also how it is integral to bringing forth worship and the community of faith associated with it. Kleinman’s analysis of “the moral face of care” also sums up many other aspects of care that have been discussed here: “what is exchanged is the moral responsibility, emotional sensibility, and social capital of the relationship. […] The terms ‘taking care’ and ‘caring’ imply cultivation of the person and the relationship through practices of attending, enacting, supporting, and collaborating” (2012: 1551). We extend Kleinman’s argument by showing how this also applies to non-human contexts where the objects of care are buildings and monuments, even if often explicitly personified ones. In caring for them, people come to see and know them in particular ways, but also come to know themselves differently. As if speaking directly to Kleinman’s analysis of how care involves the investment of the self, Helen exclaims: “You give the best that you have of yourself ”. At the same time, she highlights how this is constrained: “You know, there’s problems put in the way all the time, very nicely, but it all comes together that just we’re stuck, you know?”. A number of authors have argued that the everyday labours of maintenance, repair and care are only surfaced and contested when they break down (e.g. Bowker and Star 2000; Mattern 2018). At Glasgow Cathedral we have seen that there are tensions and negotiations around food, drink, candles, music, as well as interior fittings and furnishings, like lighting, memorial plaques, stained glass, works of art and other embellishments. The congregation also attribute their troubles to the lack of toilets and “halls”, associated buildings or rooms that could be used for religious and non-religious activities important for community life. The resulting tensions are understood through distinctions between the Cathedral as “monument” or “museum”, and the Cathedral as a living place of worship and other related activities. For Ben, this is the difference between “a static preservation” and “a dynamic preservation”, whereas for Alisdair, the Minister, it creates a “tension between preservation and life”. It must be “an alive building”, he stresses, to sustain a living church. The differences Ben and Alisdair eloquently capture relate to different ways of enacting and materialising the Cathedral as a matter of concern, which in turn relate to distinct ways of caring for it. In his discussion of religion and heritage in southeast Asia, Byrne (2014: 4) argues that “the stand that heritage practice

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takes against dispersion is matched by its opposition to the accretion of new on old fabric”, and yet, while “heritage conservation seeks to stabilise built fabric, popular religion cannot seem to abide stasis”. The same fundamental tension is epitomised in the debate surrounding HS’s refusal to grant permission for a new tapestry proposed by the Friends for the rood screen in the Cathedral. HS conservation architects and cultural resource officers argue that the fittings required to create a secure hanging would damage the stone fabric of the rood screen. However, their concern is also about the piling up of fabric and the ways in which this will obscure the legibility of the building, detracting in their view from its historical value. Graham, an HS architect involved in the Cathedral conservation project, says that he can see the congregation and the Friends value the building, indeed “they love it”. As an expression of this affection, he suggests the tapestry is “almost like giving a jewel to your old auntie”. Nevertheless, he agrees with his colleague Tom that the architecture “will be diminished by all this jewellery at the front”. Reflecting further on this metaphor: “[I] keep using jewellery, but yes, it’s like an eye-catcher taking your eye off […] one of the few remaining in situ rood screens in Scotland”. As Aryn Martin, Natasha Myers and Ana Viseu argue in their discussion of the politics of care, we need to pay attention to “who has the power to care, and who or what tends to get designated the proper or improper objects of care” (2015: 636; also Mattern 2018). Yet ultimately, as this chapter has demonstrated, we also need to understand the differing ways in which the object of conservation (as a focus of care) is enacted and materialised as a matter of concern. In this sense, addressing the ethico-political dimensions of care means striving “to count and include all the concerns attached to [a thing], all those who care for it” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017: 44). For care, “as a concrete doing” is always specific and practical, as are the logics of defining “good” and “bad” care (2017: 42; see also Mol 2008).

Conclusion: practising perspectivalism In this chapter, Glasgow Cathedral emerges as a world of entangled concerns populated by multiple actors engaged in different, sometimes competing forms of care. We started by exploring how the Statement of Significance for Glasgow Cathedral creates a seductive sense of order from a messy and unruly assemblage of people and things (Macdonald and Morgan 2018b). In defining significance as a composite of distinct but intersecting values, it renders these amenable to appraisal. Historical values identified in the document situate the building in relation to the history of Scotland, mediated by historical and archaeological expertise. This constitutes Glasgow Cathedral as a national heritage object and reconfigures its sacred and spiritual dimensions as principally located in the medieval past. However, in transposing it into the secular public sphere(s) of the nation-state, tensions are created with those for whom it remains a focus of spiritual meaning today.

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We have highlighted how the Cathedral is imbued with a sense of the numinous and seen as an embodiment of faith, drawing a gathered congregation together across space and time. Moreover, in acting as a heterotopia, a space of otherness set apart from daily life, the Cathedral elicits metaphysical and affective responses, mediated by its material, architectural and atmospheric qualities. HS employees stress the importance of an active congregation and ongoing religious worship for the significance of the building, acknowledging that their demise would highly detrimental. Yet, as Byrne argues: While in principle offering an even-handed consideration of all aspects of a thing’s meaning, the secular-rationalist underpinning of the practice of significance-assessment in heritage management acts to marginalise or even efface the eruptively miraculous qualities of divine sites and objects. (2020: 857) In this case, the tangible evidence the Cathedral offers for understanding medieval religion, specifically pilgrimage, remains the primary object of conservation, management and interpretation. Inevitably then, frictions arise between this conception of the Cathedral and how it is understood as a “living thing” by those who maintain spiritual and affective relations to it today, transcending distinctions between the tangible and the intangible. Within an increasingly values-oriented approach to heritage management, HS staff grapple with this disjunctive situation and the tensions it generates, through the mobilisation of perspectivalism. Rosmarie Beier-de Haan points out that late modernity is characterised by an “accumulation of diverse perspectives” (2006: 188) associated with recognition of multiple publics, producing distinct values. Such perspectivalism has become dominant in many academic disciplines, but also numerous spheres of public life, including the museum and heritage sectors where it is often manifested in a “stakeholder” model. In the management of the Cathedral, we have seen that perspectivalism works up to a point in that, as the Minister puts it, “[I]f we struggle on we will make it work”. Yet, in positing the Cathedral as objectively singular, framed by subjectively plural perspectives, the “stakeholder model” ultimately depends on some heritage experts being able to have an overarching perspective on all perspectives. Significance assessment is a particularly important instrument in enabling and enacting this totalising vision, along with the power to arbitrate across differing perspectives (Poulios 2010; Waterton 2010). Nonetheless, our account also reveals the limits of their power, showing that ultimately the HS actors involved struggle to implement a singular vision of what the Cathedral is, and how it should be cared for. In her book, The Body Multiple, Mol engages in a critique of analytical perspectivalism, which she argues leaves the physical untouched: “[it] multiplies the observers – but leaves the object observed alone. All alone. Untouched. It is only looked at. As if it were in the middle of a circle” (2002: 12). In this analytical sense, the idea of multiple perspectives naturalises conservation objects as

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singular, solid, bounded things. However, in ethnographically tracing out people’s commitments to perspectival views, we have shown how they produce specific actions and effects. As seen in Chapters 7 and 8, conservation professionals negotiate the spaces between various ideas, concerns and practices that are in tension; trying to reconcile different skilled ways of seeing and knowing that often remain irresolvable. In this chapter, we have shown how this applies to all of those involved in caring for a place like Glasgow Cathedral. Inspired by post-human approaches to care, our account shows that the Cathedral is assembled by different people as differing matters of concern, which in turn elicit specific affects and worries. In the process, the Cathedral, and its care, is constituted in different ways and at different scales, creating a multiplicity that requires negotiation within and between communities of practice. Far from disregarding power and inequalities, an emphasis on matters of concern and care “stresses the troubled and unsettling ways, the more or less subtle ethical, political and affective tremors” (Puig de la Casa 2017: 35), by which a thing is assembled. Seen through the lens of care, we also glimpse gatherings of purpose, where people work collaboratively and unendingly to hold together a thing like Glasgow Cathedral and the diverse actors who care for it.

Note 1 Recently, Historic Environment Scotland have been addressing the issue of social value in heritage management and conservation practice through a collaborative doctoral project at the University of Stirling, which also resulted in a methods toolkit for conservation practitioners (Robson 2021). https://wrestlingsocialvalue.org/, accessed 1 September 2021.

CONCLUSION Working through the past

Keeping things in being How are conservation objects made and what do they make? What kind of work does this making involve? To commemorate the centenary of the Ancient Monuments Act 1882, the BBC commissioned a television series, Echoes in Stone, focusing on the work of the Ancient Monuments Division of the Scottish Development Department, a precursor to HS. The book that accompanied the series was situated within a resolutely modernist tradition in which the object of conservation is concerned with achieving material stability and timelessness. Nevertheless, the two former inspectors who wrote the introductory chapter highlight the paradoxical nature of this work, in terms that continue to resonate today: An aged building needs a lot of expert help to keep it in being, whether it be a 40 foot high Broch or the much higher ruin of Elgin Cathedral or Threave Castle near Castle Douglas. Left to their own devices, they are caused by the forces of time and weather to collapse, their walls to become the mounds of archaeology. The persisting ideal for ancient monuments is that nothing conspicuous should appear, so that all the visual quality of our inheritance is unimpaired. A huge amount of work goes into the painstaking scraping-out of perished mortar, into its sympathetic replacement: at the end of the day the building is firm again but very little change appears on the surface. (MacIvor and Fawcett 1983: 27; emphasis added) Keeping things “in being” involves an active and ongoing relationship between the past, present and future. In response to change, conservation practice involves interventions that paradoxically work to keep historic buildings and monuments DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-13

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in some sense the same. Current circumstances constantly and recursively turn old things into new kinds of problem, throwing up questions and dilemmas of various kinds. To what extent is change a threat to the very essence of what material traces of the past embody? Is authenticity best conserved by distinguishing present interventions from “original” fabric or by attempting to recreate what has come before? How can the diverse values that make up the significance of these material traces be best carried forward? If conservation is itself an artificially modern enterprise, then the question is how and to what extent to intervene? These underlying conservation dilemmas are situated in, and complicated by, wider environmental, societal and political challenges. How can the impact of climate-changed conditions on the material traces of the past be mitigated? At the same time, how can historic buildings and monuments contribute to lowcarbon futures? Can financial constraints be negotiated, whilst simultaneously rising to the demands of supporting sustainable development and achieving broader “public goods”? How should “stakeholder” values be balanced alongside conservation expertise? In this book, we have focused on the work of conservation as a way of “keeping things in being”, to borrow from and extend Iain MacIvor and Richard Fawcett’s (1983) felicitous phrase. Through an ethnographic analysis of everyday conservation practice, our account surfaces the hidden work of keeping things in some sense as they are, in the face of various challenges, changes and threats. We have explored how the problems, questions and dilemmas involved are framed and addressed by conservation professionals in their routine work with specific sites, materials, tools and practices. Side-stepping the analytic question, “do conservation objects objectively exist?” we have addressed the ethnographic question, “how are these objects made to exist and what does believing in their existence do?” Likewise, we have sought to re-frame the abstractly normative question, “are these conservation practices good?”, as a series of more specific questions about the kinds of “good” that heritage professionals imagine conservation to be.

The object of conservation The thrust of much recent academic literature on heritage has been to urge a shift from modernist understandings of heritage as a stable, singular object to a focus on heritage as a plurally constructed practice. Emma Waterton succinctly describes this: “Heritage can be better understood as a process, a verb, or something that is done rather than a concrete entity” (2010: 5). Research in this vein importantly highlights the limitations and elisions associated with materially essentialist ideas about heritage as a singular and self-evident object. However, it can inadvertently elide an important dynamic that our account helps to reveal. Moving beyond framings of heritage as either object or action – as verb or noun – we have examined how conservation practice involves dialectal relationships between these. Thus, we have seen how conservation creates objects out of action, for instance in the ways that objects materialise through practices of designation and regulation,

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as well as through the everyday decisions that frame the maintenance and repair of historic buildings and monuments. Likewise, we have shown how actions are made out of objects, for example, highlighting how these practices are framed by ethical sensibilities and linked forms of care. Our account has attended to the provisional, ongoing work associated with the object of conservation in the linked sense of how conservation objects are made, and the consequences and moral purpose of that making. In doing so, we have examined how people and things are entangled, situating these entanglements in two key ways. In the first part of the book, our focus has been on the kinds of people required to do the work of heritage conservation; how particular professional selves and identities are shaped in relation to institutional structures and broader conservation principles. In the second part, we have attended to how these ideals and aspirations are deflected in practice: how conservation objects elude, resist or reconfigure attempts to know and control them; how aims are often confounded by the material contexts people seek to manage; and how other groups of people refuse, resist or re-situate the work of heritage professionals. Thus, the book endeavours to capture the linked but distinct senses in which heritage practice materialises the object of conservation. Conservation creates objects, in the sense of literal, tangible, material things, that are stabilised, isolated, separated and protected from the wider world, however precariously and provisionally. At the same time, the object of conservation refers to the practical, ideological and moral ideals that propel and justify this work, and which make it seem an important and valuable thing to engage in. In practice, these two senses of object as thing and as purpose – of heritage as noun and as verb – are entangled in a range of specific ways. The purpose of conservation remains centrally anchored in the ideal of stable, material things as valued embodiments of the past. Yet insofar as decisions about what to conserve and protect are always rooted in judgements, the reverse is also true: objects of conservation physically and tangibly materialise the values, ideals and ethical judgements that are made in relation to them. We argue that keeping things “in being” involves forms of active passivity that we distinguish from the incidentally passive sense of simply “letting things be”, but also from the more actively interventionist logic of making things become something new. Rather than working on the past, we have shown how conservation experts try to work with and through it. They seek in various ways to configure the present in relation to pre-existent material traces of the past, at the same time as remaking that past with specific futures in mind. We have highlighted how everyday practices of repair connect to ethical and affective sensibilities of care, in ways that are often unacknowledged. In the process, we have shown that conservation has more in common with other ways of caring for material traces of the past than is often acknowledged in critical literatures that set authorised or official approaches to heritage apart from those of wider communities of attachment and interest. What broader conceptual possibilities emerge from the specifics of the cases and contexts described in this book? In the following sections, we foreground the book’s key arguments and findings thematically.

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Making subjects, making objects Our account complicates modernist understandings of conservation objects as self-evident singular, stable entities with inherent qualities, showing how they are made and imagined through everyday institutional practices. Out of an array of things carried forward from the past, heritage professionals selectively constitute some of these as distinct objects of knowledge, concern and care. Adopting a position of analytic agnosticism (Brumann 2014) to modernist understandings of conservation, we have ethnographically explored the ongoing consequences of this. In doing so, we have highlighted the actions, concepts and dilemmas that stem from understandings of conservation objects as singular, stable entities, along with the forms of expertise required to produce these. We have shown how these interactions are situated by longer-term professional commitments to conservation that are complicated by late modern, neoliberal forms of management and changing ideas of “public good”. In a range of ways, we have brought to light the circular nature of conservation. Through navigating a complex set of dilemmas, conservation professionals produce the objects that are axiomatic to their work. In multiple contexts and registers, conservation practice materially instantiates the concepts it assumes to exist, even as these concepts are also questioned and extended through such material entanglements. Conservation practitioners work to create the stable objects they presuppose and in doing so they routinely efface their own work in achieving this. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and other post-human approaches (Grasseni 2004; Latour 2005; Law and Singleton 2005; Mol 2002), we have shown how diverse forms of expertise, skill and practice constitute the object of conservation in specific ways (explored in depth in Part II). Classification, documentation and institutional infrastructures are deployed to stabilise and control conservation objects (Vidal and Dias 2016). Conservation interventions work to prevent change, maintaining structures that would otherwise fall apart, or repairing those that already have. Historic buildings and monuments involve vital and dynamic materials and agencies in complex networks (DeSilvey 2017; Edensor 2011). Practitioners make active interventions in these, reinforcing some networks of relations and cutting others. Our account shows how conservation creates a space in which the instability of conservation objects is exposed and their multiplicity negotiated. Thus, we foreground a set of dynamics that are elided both in analyses framed by modernist understandings of conservation objects and in postmodern deconstructions. Those involved navigate the jeopardy arising from intervention in the biographies of conservation objects by bringing different kinds of expertise together (see next section). Stability and continuity are active achievements of this work, yet our research shows that efforts to (re)establish them are often partly failures. In practice, ideals of stability and continuity are questioned and complicated by a range of people and things, which ultimately remain unruly, mutable and open to a multiplicity of futures (DeSilvey 2017; Yaneva 2008). Thus, our analysis foregrounds

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the limits to institutional and professional agency, revealing how “authorised” versions of the past often founder as they get entangled in the socio-material contexts they seek to control and grasp. The object of conservation shapes and is shaped by professional selves that are constructed as actively deferential to it. Extending theories of maintenance (Graham and Thrift 2007; Spelman 2002) and care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) to the work of conservation, we have shown how conservation practitioners produce continuity through what we characterise as an “active passivity”, which needs to be cultivated and worked at. Ideals of “humility”, “modesty” and “patience”, orient professional sensibilities and commitments that are carefully and consciously embodied (as discussed in Chapter 2). These lead to practices that are distinct from an unthinking adherence to “doctrinal” conservation charters and conventions. In various ways, these forms of attentive subservience simultaneously recognise and realise a vision of the conservation object as an independent entity with temporal and conceptual primacy.

Bureaucracy, expertise and skilled practice As a form of institutional practice, conservation responds to specific sites, materials and places and is contoured by their particular qualities. Much of the existing scholarship on heritage and conservation perpetuates understandings of these organisations as impersonal and placeless. Critiques of “authorised heritage” often focus on policies and discourses abstracted from the specific sites and people involved in their creation, interpretation and implementation. Even where accounts have explored the policy and practice of heritage professionals ethnographically, they have rarely focused on the articulation of institutional practices, with specific historic buildings and monuments (although see contributions to Brumann and Berliner 2016). By contrast, inspired by new anthropologies of bureaucracy (Bear and Marthur 2015; Hull 2012a), our analysis highlights the tensions, negotiations and forms of practice that arise where general policies and universal principles intersect with specific material contexts. We have shown how everyday institutional spaces situate and enable conservation practice. Importantly our account also foregrounds the specific forms of agency that are attributed to conservation objects (arguments developed in Part I in particular). If institutional practice constructs conservation objects through policies, procedures and principles, ethnographically speaking the reverse is also true. For those involved, institutional practice is a specific response that is secondary and subsidiary to the objects they seek to conserve and is activated by the concerns that stem from the material conditions of specific historic contexts. Thus, whilst the object of conservation is a materialisation of institutional practices, it simultaneously participates in the materialisation of these practices. Institutional structures, policies and principles are not simply applied, but shaped and remade through these encounters.

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We have shown how the object of conservation is located in complex networks of relations, involving documents, infrastructures, and embodied practices that unfold in multi-directional flows (Chapter 6 in particular). Our account reveals how institutional structures and organisational technologies need work to keep them going. Inspired by recent work on profusion (Macdonald et al. 2020a and 2020b), we have highlighted how attempts to impose order on a profuse past lead to a proliferation of records and infrastructures that also need ordering and managing. Much of the bureaucratic work implicated in conservation therefore involves efforts to maintain and repair the institutional structures and organisational practices involved. Heritage practitioners recursively apply a conservation logic to their own pasts, situating present institutional issues and dilemmas in relation to previous practices, and seeking to unfold new institutional presents and futures from this. Moving beyond generalised accounts of heritage expertise, our research shows how conservation objects are materialised in different ways through the work of various experts. Influenced by work on expert practice in other spheres (particularly Grasseni 2004, 2007a; Mol 2002), we have highlighted (in Part II) how shared conservation aims are refracted through the lens of specific practices, procedures, skills and ways of working. Understandings of these as different “perspectives” on a singular and stable object belie the materially consequential nature of these different practices. As specific kinds of experts, architects, archaeologists, stonemasons and applied technical conservators (amongst others) materialise different kinds of object. Their actions shape these objects in specific ways in order to know, understand and intervene in them. If heritage expertise is in this sense materially consequential, it is also materially situated: the knowledge they produce is contingent on particular configurations of tools, sites and forms of embodied practice. It follows that this knowledge is more contingent, fragile and fallible than is often supposed, as heritage professionals are often acutely aware. While therefore questioning ideas of experts as purveyors of universal and transcendent truths, we nonetheless challenge deconstructive understandings of the knowledge produced through expertise as illusory or unreal. Conservation experts materialise conservation objects in different ways, and the literal substance of their knowledge, its specific physicality, corporeality and material form, has consequences for what can be claimed about them and with what authority. While our account questions understandings of conservation objects as stable and singular, it also highlights how such ideas remain as axiomatic ideals that orient this work. “There is only one building”, as one heritage manager puts it on a site visit, an apparent statement of fact that is also a form of manifesto. The building’s objective singularity is regarded both as a pre-given fact and a thing that must be achieved through the resolution of the different understandings of those involved. Ideas of the conservation object as objectively singular also underpin its imagined role in bringing different kinds of expertise and skilled practice together. We have seen how buildings and monuments are understood to play an active role in decision-making processes, having specific empirical qualities

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that mediate the alignment of different institutional roles and associated forms of expertise. Site meetings and fieldwork are institutional forms through which differences are actively foregrounded in respect to conservation objects, in order to bring them together (for example, see Chapters 3 and 6). Ideas about empirical objectivity likewise involve faith in the singularising qualities of conservation objects and their capacity to reconcile difference (as discussed in Chapter 4). Nevertheless, the alignment of different kinds of seeing and knowing is usually a temporary achievement and difference is often ultimately unresolved. The ideal of “objectivity” therefore configures a range of anxieties about whether and how this can be realised in practice.

Time, authenticity and significance What then of the temporal relations of these objects and the material and immaterial qualities associated with them? How is their “reality” recognised, made and manifested through ideas of authenticity and significance? Such questions have been critically attended to in a range of ways. Our account offers new insights through an ethnographic focus on the temporal and material “ambivalences” (Breglia 2006) arising from the everyday work of heritage conservation professionals. As discussed in the Introduction, modernist temporal framings of conservation and materially essentialist understandings of authenticity have been extensively critiqued. By contrast, in this account, we have sought to surface how heritage professionals inhabit, conceptualise and resolve the contradictions that flow from these overarching temporal and material logics. Framed by the ruptures and destructive capacities of modernity, those involved in heritage conservation respond to a gap between their visions of the past and a present that threatens these. A sense of temporal disjuncture arises from buildings, monuments and artefacts that are of the past but in the present. Since these uniquely embody specific pasts, this disjuncture underpins an “endangerment sensibility” (Vidal and Dias 2016), insofar as they materialise earlier times and represent what is seen as a finite, fragile “resource” (Holtorf 2001). This temporal disjuncture also holds potential, in so far as conservation seeks to preserve, protect or recover the past in a way that is valuable to the present and future. From the perspective of modern understandings of linear time, it is common to imagine the future as an outcome of present actions, an orientation that is often evident in heritage conservation (Harrison 2020). People at HS are concerned with the implications of their work and the legacy this creates by way of “inheritance” for future generations. Yet often the logic of temporal causality is reversed (Nielsen 2014), as when imagined future scenarios inform present actions, understandings and decisions (Yarrow 2018a, 2018b). In this sense, imagined heritage futures create new conservation presents. Ideas about linear time intersect with those relating to authenticity and significance. Our account highlights how a link between authenticity and materiality is simultaneously axiomatic to much conservation practice and yet profoundly

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questioned through it (see especially Chapter 7). Moving beyond accounts of authenticity either as a given and real “fact” or an artificial “construction”, we foreground how the “real” is crafted through practices that entangle people and things ( Jones 2010; Jones and Yarrow 2013). Similarly, we show how significance is produced through practices of assessing values, which work to create the realities they describe (Ireland et al. 2020; Macdonald and Morgan 2018b). Conceived as a composite of values, some of which are understood as “intrinsic” and others as transient, the practice of significance assessment orchestrates complex temporal relationships assigning some values to the past and others to the present (see Chapter 9). Seen as an essentially “modern” enterprise, conservation professionals are often wary of the capacity for their own actions to threaten authenticity and significance. Those involved recognise how interventions can change or destroy the existing qualities of conservation objects, but also acknowledge the threat to authenticity posed by forms of protection that “artificially” prevent change and decay. This general ambivalence is situated through specific forms of conservation practice. Bureaucratic technologies of documentation are used in an attempt to stabilise authenticity and significance, testifying to the “reality” of conservation objects and even standing for them in the face of loss or destruction. At the same time, these forms of bureaucracy are also seen as a potential threat to the “real”, practical work of looking after them, particularly where institutional standardisation is understood to work against context-specific understanding (see especially Chapter 6). By contrast, understood as part of a “living tradition”, masons are often seen as the embodiment of “authentic” practices and qualities that are transferred to the objects they create (Chapter 7). Technologies and practices associated with different forms of expertise are thus understood to enable and threaten the authenticity and significance of conservation objects in different ways. Even in the face of postmodern challenges, modernist orientations persist in conservation practice. Authenticity is both assumed and produced as something integral to the object of conservation, conceived in relation to a temporally distinct past. We have highlighted how heritage practitioners imagine their interventions and interactions in the present to be a response to this materially embodied past. Alongside these understandings, late modern orientations are associated with ideas about heritage significance as a matrix of “values” that need to be curated. Thus, the object of conservation has an increasingly ambiguous status as both a “thing in itself ”, and a set of “values” relating to that thing. While the last few decades have seen a broad shift from the former approach to the latter, our analysis complicates received understandings of this in periodised terms, demonstrating how these versions of conservation are present as co-existing possibilities that often contradict and conflict. Further complications arise with respect to the co-option of conservation objects for wider instrumental socio-economic outcomes and future “public good”. These complexities are related, negotiated and sometimes reconciled in ways that are partly contextual and reflect the specific roles and expertise of those involved.

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Our account also highlights how different kinds of expertise and skill intersect with distinct understandings of the temporality of conservation practice itself. Some of those involved, notably stonemasons, locate their practices as part of the stream of time. Understanding their work as a “living tradition” they see their interventions as part of the “heritage of the future”. Others, such as heritage managers and cultural resource officers with archaeological and historical training, seek to separate and extract their work from the biography of the object itself, informed by the logic of “conserve as found”. Different understandings of the relationship between past, present and future are intimately enmeshed in distinct working practices. Historical narratives, such as those articulated in statements of significance, are materially consequential, framing decisions about what to keep or what to let go. We have shown how time is enfolded in and un-folded from conservation objects in a range of ways, through the expert practices of different people. These practices produce different kinds of temporal (dis)continuity between past, present and future. We have also explored these temporal relationships through the work of technical or “applied” conservators who deal with material transformation and decay close-up (particularly in Chapter 8). Building on and extending recent work (particularly DeSilvey 2017; Edensor 2011; Otero-Pailos 2016), we have highlighted how historic buildings and monuments involve vital and dynamic assemblages of materials and agencies, which themselves participate in bringing about change. Those involved in technical conservation intervene in these processes, re-arranging the properties of things by drawing various distinctions and boundaries. This involves them in “tinkering” (Ravetz 1971) with materials, using multi-sensory, “tactile knowing” (Pink et al. 2014: 438) alongside scientific techniques and tools. In doing so, those involved in technical conservation (re) instate nature-culture distinctions, but also work across them at times co-opting “nature” into the project of keeping conservation objects “in being”. Objects of conservation materialise through practices in which ideas about linear time, authenticity and value are complexly enmeshed. In the literatures on heritage, the linear, periodised understandings that make up “modern time” (Bear 2014; see also Lucas 2015) are mostly either taken for granted or deconstructed. In contrast, we have interrogated the effects of “modern time” as it is imagined and produced through specific conservation practices. Assessments of authenticity and significance mediate understandings of the material and temporal qualities of specific conservation objects, framing their subsequent management and care in ways that shape the material form these take. Our account provides new insights, revealing how conservation practice both responds to these temporal dilemmas and (re)creates the temporal orders that it pre-supposes.

The politics and ethics of care Heritage experts have been singled out in critical literatures as “a special kind of elite” (Brumann 2014: 175), purveyors of a “truth” that conceals the vested

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interests and subjective biases of elites, whilst relegating others to the sidelines (see also Witcomb and Buckley 2013). Critiques of heritage from a variety of disciplinary perspectives highlight the important point that conservation plays a role in reinforcing power relations through privileging certain perspectives and marginalising others. However, in locating the politics of heritage in a dualistic opposition between “authorised” professionals and other subaltern groups, analyses have often overlooked the more subtle and situated power differentials within and across these domains. Moving beyond detached critiques, our approach enables an ethnographic deconstruction from “within” the practice of heritage conservation, a move that is consistent with Brett Mommersteeg’s concern to foreground “a view of politics from the plane of experience” (2020: 66). We have shown that different versions of heritage exist within and beyond “authorised” institutional spaces in contradictory, conflicting and partially overlapping relationships. Since the object of conservation is constituted in different ways, politics is located in everyday, active negotiations within and between communities of expert practice (discussed indepth in Chapters 7, 8 and 9). Our work extends understanding of conservation practice, revealing how the “authorised” domain of heritage is itself highly differentiated, and highlighting how tensions and contradictions are central to the institutional spaces of national heritage organisations. Professional conservation exists as part of a wider nexus of people with distinct but overlapping ways of caring for the past. At Glasgow Cathedral, for instance, members of the church often view it as a “living building”, an embodiment of ongoing faith and spirituality. Their views on how to use and care for the Cathedral are sometimes sharply opposed to those of HS employees whose understandings of it, as the embodiment of a medieval religious past, are associated with greater resistance to change. Relationships between heritage professionals and others often involve tensions of this kind. However, these develop alongside affinities, alliances and common assumptions that cross-cut and complicate any straightforward opposition between conservation professionals and other groups. For instance, some HS employees (notably masons and conservation architects) partly share the more interventionist logic of care enacted by members of the congregation, seeing present actions as part of the unfolding “life” of the building. The protectionist impulse to isolate the Cathedral from present threats as manifested in the work of heritage managers and cultural resource officers is also evident in some of the work of the Friends of Glasgow Cathedral, even while they also embrace other temporal logics of care. Framed by an increasingly values-oriented approach to heritage management, HS staff attempt to manage a multiplicity of conflicting concerns through a “stakeholder” model. Whilst in principle informed by a more consensual and “participatory” approach, this often entrenches the authority of certain experts as those with the power to orchestrate and prioritise these “stakeholder” perspectives (Poulios 2010; Waterton 2010). Yet, if heritage experts occupy a privileged position in this respect, their power to define the object of conservation is never

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entirely given or absolute. Their efforts to define and manage these objects are contingent on organising other people and material contexts who often resist or re-situate these efforts at control. How to conceptualise the politics of these differences? The dilemmas arising from the recuperative work of keeping things “in being” are simultaneously political and ethical. Inspired by post-human approaches to care (Latour 2005; Mol et al. 2010; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), we have shown how different people assemble conservation objects as differing “matters of concern” (Latour 2008: 49). Conservation objects are things that persist in particular material forms because they are supported and cared for in particular ways. These objects generate specific affects and worries for different people, and garner distinct, though at times overlapping, practices of care (Chapter 9). Politics emerges, therefore, not as an expression of underlying interests, but as a function of whose perspectives literally and metaphorically “matter” when working through these ethical tensions and choices. Approaching conservation objects as gatherings of concern and care offers a different way of understanding the ethico-political tensions this generates; one that can transcend a dualistic distinction between the care of conservation professionals and that of others. Building on anthropological work on “everyday ethics” (particularly Laidlaw 2014; Lambek 2015) we have shown how conservation entails an emergent ethics, as those involved work within ambivalent and contradictory spaces. As Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser and Jeannette Pols argue in respect to care in clinics, homes and farms: [S]eeking a compromise between different ‘goods’ does not necessarily depend on talk, but can also be a matter of practical tinkering, of attentive experimentation. […] The good is not something to pass a judgement on, in general terms and from the outside, but something to do, in practice, as care goes on. (2010: 13) Extending these insights to the context of conservation, we highlight how care for the past plays out as situated dilemmas, rather than as abstract moral choices. Notions of “best practice” belie the ethical complexity involved for there is rarely a clear-cut choice between right or wrong. Individually and collectively those at HS seek to work out what is best through attempting to balance and reconcile abstract conservation principles that do not straightforwardly or procedurally resolve. Professional virtues of “humility” and “patience” are broadly celebrated but must be embodied and enacted in ways that are specific to particular roles and forms of expertise. Ethical questions derive from the social interactions that characterise their working lives and their unfolding material relations with the artefacts, sites and monuments they care for. Conservation as care is also a more fundamental ideal that is situated and understood, in relation to the lives that people live beyond work (specifically discussed

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in Chapter 5). HS employees often describe how their lives are both absorbed in it and transformed by it. Our account contributes to a wider understanding of the range of interests and ideals that animate this work. It also shows that in this sphere, as in others (healthcare, social care, domestic care, etc.), care does not just come out of institutional aims, managerial processes and skilled practice. It involves personal commitment and often a profound investment of the self. Importantly, we have shown how conservation is both enabled and threatened by such personal interests and commitments. The ideal of “vocation” shapes a sense of professional identity that intersects with other areas of life, often expressed through autobiographical narratives. At the same time, such “personal” interests are also potentially problematic, for instance where they are seen to threaten institutional “objectivity”. Thus, our research develops new understandings of these institutional spaces, countering analyses of conservation as an impersonal “discourse”.

Recursive continuities In a discussion of English understandings of temporal change, Marilyn Strathern argues that: The stable and the transient coexist in a manner that makes it possible to ask, with respect to almost anything, how much change has taken place. This is a very general, ordinary and otherwise unremarkable kind of question. It seems to lead naturally to further questions about what should be conserved and what should be reformed. (1992: 1–2) Rather than see change as opposed to continuity, she highlights how: “Each depends on the other to demonstrate its effect. Magnifying one is to magnify both” (1992: 2). Building on these insights, our account foregrounds how change and continuity are mutually implicated in a temporal dialectic that is central to conservation practice. Present circumstances lead to new questions about what the object of conservation is and how it should be kept, but also challenge conservation practitioners to re-think and re-make the approaches they take to these. This in turn foregrounds the relationship between contemporary conservation practice and its own past. We have highlighted how, at sites like Lochmaben Castle and Cadzow Castle, monumental traditions, associated with ideals of conservation as a form of perpetual stasis, encounter a range of threats, including climate change and diminished funding that challenge the very fundamentals of this approach (see Chapter 1). Should these monuments be consolidated or restored as they have been in past conservation campaigns? Or should they be left to decay, or reburied even? Explicitly framed in seminars and workshops as iconic “case studies” that raise bigger issues and dilemmas, the question is not simply how best to deal with

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these castles, but what doing so might imply for the future of conservation as practice and philosophy. New approaches are seen not just as a threat to existing principles, but also an “existential threat” to keeping things in being in the organisation itself. As one senior HS conservation architect puts it at an away day devoted to the challenges: We’re going to have to change our expectations and change other people’s expectations of who we are and what we do. My concern is that the resources are so mismatched to the demand that […] over a lot of sites we’re now not doing enough to keep them as they are. (our emphasis) In relation to their own principles, as in respect to the objects they seek to preserve, change involves ruptures to which conservation practitioners respond through fabricating new forms of continuity. We have shown how the work of re-establishing continuity operates across a range of contexts and scales of dislocation in ways that often intersect. Physical degradation or decay at particular buildings, for instance, is often seen in relation to broader ideas of environmental peril relating to discourses of climate change, as well as to a sense of institutional rupture, associated with ideas about austerity. Insofar as change remains a constant, conservation recursively encounters the question of how to maintain continuity. New forms of continuity are made and imagined in relation to novel contexts and concerns about change. Climate change and austerity constitute new threats that make the object of conservation into news kinds of problem in response to the futures they pose (and see Harrison et al. 2020). Over and again, objects of conservation are made to exist anew, even where that existence appears as a form of stasis or emerges as an active form of non-intervention. Conservation practice is recursive in the sense that these questions are ongoing and remain ultimately unresolved. Abstract policies and existing approaches must constantly be rendered relevant to the demands of specific transactional presents and imagined futures. Keeping things in being is never a finished or final accomplishment insofar as buildings and monuments decay as the world continues to unfold. The recursive nature of this work also relates to contradictions that are integral to conservation as a domain of professional practice. Broad agreement on the principle of “minimal intervention”, for instance, leaves open a range of possible interpretations regarding appropriate levels of action. Shared ideals of the importance of “objectivity” frame specific doubts and anxieties about the various ways in which this can be practically compromised by “personal interests” or “subjectivity”. Recursive questions emerge as to how to uphold the ideal of objectivity, in the face of interventions that intimately enmesh people and things. The aim of institutional “organisation” and “order” is constantly frustrated by forms of profusion, which exceed and complicate these efforts at control. In a world of flux, the ideal of fixity is at best only temporary and often very partial.

EPILOGUE

“But did anyone mention the connections to empire and slavery?”, Marion, a heritage professional, asks SJ, over a glass of wine in an Edinburgh bar. It is September 2021 and HS has been superseded by a new organisation, Historic Environment Scotland (HES). They are discussing whether some of the research conducted at Glasgow Cathedral might enhance the portrayal of “social” and “spiritual” values in the building’s Statement of Significance, a key document framing its conservation. Mirroring other heritage organisations in the wake of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, HES have just initiated a project focusing on connections between empire, slavery and the national estate. The project aims to “investigate and understand the imperial connections of the [now] 336 properties in care (PICS) by situating the historical landowners within the activities of the British Empire, including the transatlantic slave economy and other colonial activities” (Grant 2021: no page number). Marion’s question raises important issues that we return to more directly below. It also foregrounds others relating to our own account. Does an ethnographic description of the practices through which objects of conservation are made have implications for how they might be made differently? How do the politics and ethics of everyday conservation practice intersect with wider political discourses and conflicts in the public sphere? What is the relevance of a project completed over 5 years ago for understandings of heritage today and in the future? When we embarked on the research recounted in this book, we set out with an open-ended agenda to explore ethnographically how objects of conservation materialise. Our book aims to apprehend, more than to refine or amend, the practices we describe. The resulting account is therefore situated “adjacently”, rather than critically, to the more practically oriented concerns of heritage practitioners. Rather than engage with conservation practice from a position of critical detachment, we have attempted to reveal the critical possibilities and potentials DOI: 10.4324/9781315622385-14

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that develop from within this domain of experience. We hope this attempt to understand things as they are already done offers a perspective to consider how they might be done differently. During our fieldwork, and in response to earlier drafts of this book, some of those professionals we worked with observed the “discomfort” and even “queasiness” of being written about. Many found it hard to see the messiness, contradictions and compromises of their working lives foregrounded in this way. Yet they also commented more positively on the way these accounts made them see some of these practices afresh, to realise better what they already knew, or to value this in a slightly different way. These were not so much “our” insights, as ones that our research facilitated our participants to have: they arose from the contexts of specific working lives and led back to them in equally specific terms. We hope the book will be of more general relevance for heritage practitioners of all kinds, allowing a novel context for reflection on the problems and possibilities of existing practice. As an active intervention in the biographies of valued “old things”, conservation confronts, and attempts to resolve, a range of dilemmas. A sense of jeopardy is keenly felt by all involved, framed by a moral weight of responsibility for the futures that conservation creates. We have highlighted the interstitial spaces in which hard decisions are made and we have shown the considerable effort it takes to keep things in being in a world of change. In foregrounding points of tension and interpretation, we hope it is evident how these are also points of opportunity and choice. Some of the resulting decisions have undoubtedly reinscribed privilege or marginalised important voices, although this is not always or necessarily so. We want to foreground the potential that conservation practice offers: it is a space in which the past is rendered relevant to the present through practices of care, in conscious and reflective ways that open out to various possible futures. Returning to Marion’s question and Glasgow Cathedral, nobody mentioned its relationships to empire and slavery during our research. No one was preoccupied with the imperial connections of prominent individuals memorialised within it. No one voiced questions about where the money came from that was invested in the Cathedral as an important civic and national monument at the heart of the Church of Scotland. But why was this so? How do we account for what seems like a yawning gulf between the ethical and political negotiations of everyday conservation practice and the broader politics of the past writ large? The most common explanation is that such “hidden histories” have been silenced and effaced. This is true. But our account allows us to qualify this further. Understood as matters of concern, objects of conservation materialise through constellations of practice, which are specific, situated and subject to change. New ways of caring are associated with new ways of relating to past, present and future. In the case of Edward Colston’s statue, for instance, its toppling during BLM protests in June 2020 is now at the forefront of how it is constituted as an object of conservation – as a matter of concern and care. Following its recovery from Bristol harbour, the mud and silts have been removed, but the protest graffiti

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sprayed across the statue is being carefully conserved, along with the bicycle tyre that was hanging off Colston’s coat tails as he emerged from the water. Fran Coles, Bristol City Council’s conservation and documentation manager, explains that her “role was to come in, assess the condition and clean any mud off without causing any further damage to the statue” (cited in Cork and Pipe 2020). After a meticulous account of physical damage to the bronze-work, somewhat out of keeping with the journalistic narratives of most of the newspapers who covered the story, she goes on to explain that: [O]verall, he’s structurally sound, and our main concern is making sure that we can conserve the paint, the graffiti that’s on him now because that’s actually become the most fragile part of the sculpture. It has become part of the story of the object, of the statue, so our job is to try and retain that as much as possible while stabilising the statue for the long term. (Fran Coles, cited in Cork and Pipe 2020) Caroline Villers argues that: “In practice, conservators are always ‘writing’ the history of the object, as even a decision to do nothing at all constitutes an interpretation” (2004: 6). We have shown that in such practice the “good” decision or action is not given or certain. Rather conservation is a space where different versions of “the good” collide and congeal; where people try to wrest better possibilities in the face of problems, compromises and occlusions. In the current polarised politics surrounding the important move to decolonise heritage, reflections on the exclusions of previous forms of care can provoke attempts to care in new, different and better ways. The same can be said of the ways in which concerns with climate change and sustainability are associated with new ways of caring for the past, and of using it to re-imagine possibilities in the present and future. We hope that this book foregrounds the positive potential and transformative possibilities that can arise in the practical space of conservation as care, if the politics of who has the right to care, and for what, are brought to the fore.

CHARTERS AND CONVENTIONS

Recommendation of the Madrid Conference. 1904. Sixth International Congress of Architects. The Athens Charter. 1933. Congress Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. The Venice Charter: International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites. 1964. Second International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Buildings/adopted by ICOMOS. Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. 1972. UNESCO. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance. 1979 [revised 1999 and 2013]. ICOMOS Australia. The Nara Document on Authenticity. 1994. ICOMOS. European Convention on Landscape. 2000. Council of Europe. Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. 2003. UNESCO. Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention). 2005. Council of Europe.

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INDEX

Access 14, 32, 39–41, 58, 75–76, 107, 120, 129, 134, 159, 179, 183, 187, 197, 203 Accessibility 120 Accession 127, 129–130, 136–137; see also Disposal Accountability 13, 25, 32–33, 42, 44 Active passivity 1–2, 51, 72, 88, 97, 212, 214; see also Minimal intervention Actor networks 15 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 10, 67, 82, 121–122, 134, 144, 213 Aesthetics 6–7, 52, 74–75, 78–79, 85, 106, 120, 149, 152–155, 158–159, 166, 173, 175, 181, 188–200, 203–204; see also Aesthetic value; Value Affect 8, 12, 18, 75, 87, 101, 112, 114, 133, 167, 188–189, 192–194, 204–209, 212; ‘affectionate knowing’ 205 Agency 9–12, 67, 71, 81, 83, 96, 105, 126, 153, 167, 180, 183–184, 192, 213–214, 218 Age of consensus 27 Aging 37, 44, 49, 58, 69, 79, 85, 89, 98, 102, 106, 155, 160, 166, 168, 185; age value, see Values Alexander, Catherine 81 Aligning perspectives 90–92 Ambivalence 17, 33, 49, 51, 220; interests 108–110; nostalgias 37–38; persistent tinkering 185; temporal and material 216 Ancient Monuments Act (The Act (of 1882)) 41, 121, 210 Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act 1913 121

Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882 27–28, 121 Annual Monument Audits (AMAs) 16, 38, 42, 68; site meeting 57 Anti-Scrape Movement 166 Applied technical conservation 15 Archaeological approach 28, 30, 60, 64, 100–101, 108, 132, 139, 147, 151–154, 189–191, 207 Archaeologist 10, 27, 30, 42, 46, 60, 62–63, 69, 101, 105, 161, 215 Architect 31, 34, 38, 41–42, 47, 52–60, 68, 71, 73, 75, 98, 131, 134, 149, 151, 154, 156, 171, 203, 207 Architectural approach 28, 58–64, 76–81, 87–88, 101–103, 123–124, 147, 149–152, 154, 163, 182, 190 Architectural History 6, 28–29, 60, 62–63, 79, 84–85, 88, 102 Architecture (as a discipline or arena of practice) 5, 48, 57, 59, 63, 68, 75, 86, 90, 102–103, 128, 144, 147, 155–156, 166, 192, 207 Archive 15, 119–120, 127, 131–132, 141 Art history 6, 15, 63, 79, 84, 88, 175 Arts and Crafts Movement 155 Assemblage 120, 126, 191, 197 Assemblage theory 10 Assemble 72, 77, 122, 171, 204, 209, 220 Attachment 18, 187–188, 190, 212 Audit 13, 23, 25, 31–34, 136–137 Austerity 13, 23, 25, 43, 52, 222 Authenticity 2, 5–8, 58, 166; see also Truth/ truthfulness; negotiation 159–161; and

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significance 181, 216–218; through skilled practice 143–164 Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) 7, 9, 11, 96, 187 Authority 29, 43, 68, 73, 75, 84, 99, 114, 151, 202 Back, Les 72, 133 Beauty 4, 155, 160, 166, 181 Bell, Harriet 162 Bennett, Tony 120, 125, 128, 135, 137–138 Biocolonisation 165, 180–181 Biographies, of conservation objects 3, 120, 126, 130, 133, 138, 141, 171, 176, 182, 213 Black Lives Matter 223 Bracker, Alison 182 Brennies, Don 92 Brown, Steve 188 Bunderson, J. Stuart 102 Bureaucracy 51, 214–216; see also Paperwork; management 162 The Burra Charter 146–147, 188, 195 Button, Mark 51 Cameron, Fiona 125, 128, 135, 137–138 Care: ‘affectionate knowing’ 205–206; and ethico-political relations 203–207; ethics of 188, 203–207, 218–221; and faith 186–209; matters of care 12; matters of concern 12, 204, 209, 220, 224; politics of 188, 203–207, 218–221; theories of 105 Cartography 121; see also Mapping Casework 15, 66, 90, 93, 122–123, 136, 138–139 Categorisation see Classification ‘Centre of calculation’ 135, 137, 142 Change; see also Continuity; fatigue 34–37; institutional 13, 16, 23, 27, 31, 38, 54; management of 13, 42; material 144, 182; as threat to conservation 211, 217 Character 75 Charter of Athens (1933) 5 Charters 8–9, 39, 166, 195; see also Conventions Civic 14, 26, 147, 190, 224; nationalism 14, 26 Civil service 24, 32, 46, 50, 114 Class 15, 85 Classification: classificatory infrastructures 18, 141; classificatory practices 119–126, 135; classificatory records 119, 125, 213 Climate change 40, 211, 221–222, 225

Coherence 47, 62, 82, 95, 125, 134, 141, 153, 159, 170, 178–179; see also Order Collecting: practices 120, 135, 140; utopian ideal 120 Collections 121–134; manager 126–127, 136 Collections Trust 128 Collective empiricism 88 Colonialism 131, 223 Commercialisation 52 Commodification 7, 155 Community: community heritage 42; community of practice 145, 159, 162, 209; empowerment 25 Condition: condition survey 146–148, 150, 153, 167–168, 170; PiCs 37–38 Congregation 186, 191–192, 194–195, 197–198, 201, 204–208 Connoisseurship 5, 85 Consent 13, 32, 34, 40, 59–60, 68, 70, 72, 123, 148 Conservation 1–18, 31, 70, 211–213; see also Object of Conservation; dilemmas of 40–41, 47–48, 57–58, 64, 140, 147, 160, 167, 179, 187, 211, 213, 215, 218, 220; ethics of 2, 12, 47, 56, 64, 218–221; history of 3–8, 15, 100–101; masonry 95, 143–161; nature 52; personal commitments 98–112, 211; philosophy 40, 59; policies and associated practices 161; practice, recursive 222; practitioners 162; preventative conservation 174, 179; principles 151; recursivity of 43, 56, 221–222; remedial conservation 126, 173–174, 179; science 165–185; tensions 48; tracing 185 Conservationist, approaches 59 Conservative commitment 177 Conservator (applied technical) 15, 165–185, 215 ‘Conserve as found’ 41, 55, 160, 173 Consistency 66, 71, 81, 91, 96, 124, 203; see also Objectivity Constructivism 73, 125, 156, 160, 164, 187 Continuity 39–43, 194, 214, 222; see also Change Contradiction 31, 58, 64, 122, 195, 216 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003) 155 Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (2005) 19 Conventions 9, 18, 77, 155, 195, 197, 214; see also Charters

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Coordination 10, 67, 199 Craft: authenticity, through skilled practice 143–164; and conservation 155–157; practice 143–164; and science in material conservation 172–175; skills 143–164; theories of 144, 152; tradition 94 Creativity 94 Crisis and continuity 39–43 Curate 86, 129 Custodianship 38, 195 Decay 2, 40–41, 43, 47, 58, 143, 148, 152, 166, 173; see also Deterioration; Material transformation; Weathering Decision-making processes 11–12 Deferential sensibility 63 De-listing 77 Democracy 25, 32, 42, 197 Design 5, 8, 78, 149, 163, 203 Designation 120–125; documentation 122 DeSilvey, Caitlin 184–185 Despret,Vinciane 107 Destruction 54–55, 100 Detachment 50, 84, 96, 110; see also Objectivity Deterioration 147, 150, 166, 168, 173–174; see also Decay; Weathering Dias, Nélia 125, 128, 135, 137–138 Dibly, Ben 125, 128, 135, 137–138 Discourse 187, 222; see also Authorised Heritage Discourse; analysis 9; discursive turn 9, 77 Discursive turn 9, 77 Disorder 119–120, 140–142 Disposal 77–78, 86, 120, 127, 129, 162 Dissonance 187 Diversity 15, 27, 187, 197 Divine 192, 208; see also Religion; Spiritual Documentary practices 121–222, 125–142 Documentation 117–142; documentary infrastructures 129, 131–134; filing systems 131–132; forms of 132; profusion 131; recording 13, 125; self-documenting 61–62, 161; stabilisation 129–130; through Vernon 129 Dualistic 187, 219–220 DuGay, Paul 24 Edensor, Tim 144, 185 Embodiment 79, 89, 143, 153, 212 Emerick, Keith 28, 32, 60, 191 Empiricism 84, 86, 88, 92 Enactment 175–179 Endangerment sensibility 188, 216 Enlightenment 4

Environment: climate 40, 211, 221–222, 225; environmental humidity 136, 167, 174, 179–180, 182; environmental monitoring 136, 174; pests/pest control 127 Environmental Impact Assessments 90 Erosion 40, 69, 174 Essentialism 23, 161, 185, 211, 216 Ethics 218–221; of care 188, 203–207, 218–221; everyday 64, 220 Ethnographic methodology ix–xi, 9, 11–17 Evans, Gillian 67 Evans, Robert 80 Evidence 7, 33, 61, 147–148, 153–155, 161, 163, 168, 200, 208; evidence-based approach 5, 33, 93 Excavation 27, 126, 128 Experience 49, 87; direct 86–88 Expertise: In/authenticity of 58; as knowledge 27–31; politics of 145, 207 Expert practices 163, 214–216 Fabric see Material fabric Faith 186–187, 191–196, 203–209, 219 Faro Convention 195 Fawcett, Richard 126, 211 Fieldwork 134–140 Filing 36, 131–132 Fixity 120, 134, 140, 222; see also Immutability; Immutable mobile Foucault, Michel 119, 123, 193–194 Fragmentation, of conservation objects 126, 136, 141, 166 Fredheim, Harald 120, 129 Friendship 64, 157 Future 14, 35–45, 65, 80–82, 119–120, 123–125, 132, 139–141, 154, 161, 196, 213, 215–218, 222, 224 Geismar, Haidy 5 General Pitt Rivers 28 Glasgow Cathedral 16, 18, 111, 113, 143–164, 186–208 Governance 9, 25, 123, 140, 197 Grasseni, Cristina 10, 145, 150, 152, 159, 203 Guardianship 13, 39, 121 Harrison, Rodney 125, 128, 135, 137–138 Health and safety 14, 40, 76, 145, 149; see also risk Heritage; see also Authorised Heritage Discourse; Conservation; approach to ix–x, 1–3, 8–12, 210–222; politics of 6–7, 151, 171, 187, 207, 218–221; history and

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theory of 3–12; values-based approach 23, 31, 199 Heritage manager (formerly Inspector) 13, 15–16, 24, 28, 37, 69, 90, 98, 124, 182, 219 Heritage studies 6–7, 162, 187, 202 Heterotopia 193–194 Hewison, Robert 7 Holder, Julian 74 Honest repair 61 Humanistic 17 Humidity 136, 167, 174, 179–180, 182 Humility 47–51 Identity 7, 14, 17, 26, 38, 49, 55–56, 78, 103–104, 112, 221 Ignorance 49–50, 72 Immutability 124, 129; see also Fixity ‘Immutable mobile’ 124–125, 128–130, 134, 140, 151 Impartiality 110, 114; see also objectivity Imperialism 4, 223 Inclusion 182, 197 “Inclusive” heritage 27, 197 Information 87, 120, 128, 131 Infrastructures, of information 120, 129; catalogues 120; databases 120, 127–128, 130; records 128–129; reports 120, 168 Ingold, Tim 94 Inscription 121–122, 124, 128, 138, 145, 162 Inspectorate 28–29; see also Heritage Management Institution: change 13, 16, 24, 27, 38, 54; ideals of objectivity 110; infrastructures 213; knowledge 99; objectivity 91; process 109; restructuring 17; significance of materiality and place 82–83; transformations 43 Intangible 163, 166 Interest/s: external 94; as personal motivation 48; as professional commitment 11, 27, 48, 51, 54 Internationalism, conservation instruments 3, 14 Interpretation 96 Intervention 48–49; see also Minimum intervention Inventories 121 Ireland, Tracy 188 Jacknis, Ira 125, 128, 135, 137–138 James, Henry 168 Jeopardy 149, 153, 163, 176 Joking 36, 49, 56, 70, 126

Judgement 79, 89 Justice 103, 169 Kisic,Višnja 27, 187, 197 Kleinmann, Arthur 206 Lamprakos, Michele 156 Landscape 13, 98, 101, 139 Latour, Bruno 122, 124, 135, 137, 204 Legibility 41, 74, 161, 195, 207; see also ‘Readability’ Legislation 14, 28, 42, 62, 76, 91, 125 Life and profession 98–112 Listed building 28, 60, 73–74, 89, 102, 120, 122, 124 Listing; see also Designation; de-list 77–78, 86, 125; and scheduling 63, 119 Loss: architectural integrity 62; of influence and leadership 29; institutional 35; professional 37; of specialist knowledge 109; visual harmony 62 Macdonald, Sharon 120, 129 MacIvor, Iain 126, 211 Maintenance 25, 38, 40–41, 144, 150, 214; see also Repair Mair, Jonathan 50 Management 13, 28, 44, 100, 121, 134, 187, 191; see also Heritage Management; New Public Management; values-based 23, 31, 188, 199 Mapping 90, 121, 123, 138–140 Marginalisation 7, 28, 96, 156, 208, 224 Material conservation 165–185 Material fabric 144, 149, 151–155 Materiality: craft and science in 172–175; material fabric 144, 149, 151–155; transformation 165–185 Material transformation 165–185 Medical analogies and metaphors 170–171 Meetings 67–73, 77–81, 122, 153, 181–182, 196, 216 Memory 17, 32, 128, 156 Method 16–17, 27, 68, 85, 88, 99, 125, 174, 178, 185 Minimum intervention 14, 41, 49, 55, 60, 70, 144, 146, 148, 152, 160, 163; see also intervention Mitigation 128, 136, 149 Modern conservation movement 4 The Modern Cult of Monuments 58, 167 Modernism (architectural/art style) 4, 44 Modernist 7–8, 11, 44, 86, 128, 213 Modernity 4, 6–10, 14, 99, 128, 156, 166, 208, 213, 216–217

246  Index

Modesty 97, 214 Mol, Annemarie 10, 162, 171, 182, 185, 187, 197, 220 Monumentality 7, 25, 30, 39, 41, 48, 54, 58, 62, 82, 93, 120, 124, 138, 147, 174, 206 Monument Conservation Units (MCUs) 15, 59, 145 Morality 47, 74, 166, 206, 212, 220, 224 Morgan, Jennie 120, 129 Mortar 31, 74, 148–149, 151, 157, 168–169, 172, 179, 184 Multiplicity 18, 161–164, 178, 187, 213, 219 Muñoz Viñas, Salvador 173 Museum 120, 126, 129, 170, 196, 206; museum approach 126 Museum Association Guidelines 128 Museum studies 129–130 Mutability 18, 130 The Nara Document (1994) 8 National heritage 120–121 National heritage organisations 15, 17 Nationalism 14–15, 26, 121 National Performance Framework (NPF) 26 Nation-state 93, 121, 155, 187, 207; see also State Natural heritage 26, 181 Nature: and built heritage 26; nature conservation 143 Negotiation 11–12, 56, 63, 80, 92, 97, 144, 156, 191, 206 Neoliberal reforms 25 Networks; see also Actor-Network Theory; actor networks 15; material networks 183; of relationships 122 New Public Management 25, 44 Normative 31, 47, 51, 85, 96, 121 Nostalgia 37–38, 44 Numinous 192–193, 208 Objectivity 17, 24, 33, 50, 84–94, 96–97, 99, 107, 110, 114, 122, 170, 173, 216, 221–222 Object of conservation: agency of 214; approach to 211–221; authenticity of 58, 216–218; ethics of 218–221; fluidity/ mutability of 18, 130, 185; fragmentation of 126, 136, 141, 166; materialisation of 172–175; ‘object of attention’ 122, 168; as object of knowledge 96; stabilisation of 129–130; temporality of 34, 122, 218 Ontology 3, 178

Order 1, 10, 18, 46–48, 59, 64, 67–68, 74, 78–79, 89, 95, 97, 119–120, 128–129, 131, 134–136, 138, 140–142, 157, 159, 171, 175, 187, 190–191, 202, 205–207, 215–216, 218, 222; ordering practices 18, 135 (Dis)Ordered things 119–142 Ordering things 18, 121–125, 135 Organisation 2, 11, 13–17, 23–25, 29, 31–32, 34–36, 38–40, 43–44, 46, 52–53, 59, 66–68, 73, 77, 81–83, 86, 90–93, 101–103, 106, 108, 110, 122, 126, 131–133, 166, 214–215, 219, 222–223; see also Institution Originality 5, 39, 75–76, 95, 144 Ownership 13, 15–16, 121, 129 Painting 15, 34, 54, 59, 105, 126, 136, 166, 175–180, 183, 204 Paperwork 33, 73; see also Bureaucracy Participation 14, 25, 42, 197 “Participatory” heritage/approaches 25, 27, 29, 219 Partnership working 196 Passion 29, 98, 102, 107, 109, 111, 202 Past 1–9, 11–12, 17, 23–65, 67, 81–86, 88, 93, 96–99, 104–109, 114, 141, 143–144, 156, 161, 163, 177, 184, 187–189, 191–192, 194–195, 207, 210–222, 224–225; deference to 49, 63; effects in present 23–45; institutional 24, 27, 38, 41, 43; politics of 18; remembered 194 Patience 17, 47, 49, 51–54, 56–57, 63, 65, 94, 158, 169, 214, 220 Patina 166, 184–185 Pendlebury, John 27 Perspectivalism 18, 91, 178, 185, 187, 197, 201–202, 207–209 Picturesque 37, 100, 106 Place 14, 26, 32, 52, 54, 59, 67, 71, 75–78, 81–83, 87, 91, 93, 98, 100–101, 121, 129, 131, 136, 140, 142, 146, 151–152, 156–157, 160–161, 163, 165, 171, 174–175, 180, 183, 187–188, 190, 192, 194, 196–197, 205–206, 209, 214, 221 Policy 3, 9, 23–24, 26–28, 30, 32, 39, 41–42, 55, 60, 66, 72, 74, 106–107, 109, 121, 127, 155, 162–163, 214; as practice 142, 145, 152, 157–159, 170, 203; ‘Scottish approach’ 24, 26 Politics 7, 18, 145, 151, 171, 185, 187, 207, 218–221, 223–225; of care 51, 204, 206; of conservation 218–221; and ethics

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of care 218–221; identity politics 7; of practice 162 Pollution 148, 167–168, 172, 184, 200 Postcolonial 4 Posterity 128, 143, 204; see also Future Post-human 17, 209, 213, 220 Postmodern/postmodernist 6–10, 14, 213, 217 Power 9, 26–27, 29, 96–97, 123, 161, 199, 203, 207–208, 219 Practice: practice theory 8–12; skilled practice 142, 145, 152, 157–159, 170, 203; see also ‘Skilled vision’ Pragmatism 54–56 Preservation by record 128 Profession 98–112 Professional judgement 79, 89–90, 114 Professional identity 17, 43, 78, 112 Profusion 120, 124–134, 141, 215, 222 Progress 4, 6, 24, 36–37, 42, 166 Properties in Care (PiCs) 13, 46, 59; management of 46 Properties in Care Clearance (PiCC) 13, 32, 68 Property in Care (PiC) 68 Protection 27, 30, 59, 84, 93, 107, 121, 217 Public: access 41, 129, 179; public gaze 171; ‘public good’ 25, 103, 211, 213, 217; ‘public sphere’ 121, 192 Public accountability 13, 25, 32–33, 42, 44 Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria 204–205 Pye, David 9, 94, 144, 159 Readability 74; see also Legibility Reconciliation 82 Reconstruction 166; see also Replication; Restoration Record 119–120, 124, 129, 131, 148, 199 Recursivity 42, 211, 221–222 Reed, Adam 71, 98 Reformation, the 145, 147, 187, 192, 194, 200, 202–203 Regulation 12, 32, 40, 68, 110, 140–141, 145, 151, 190, 211 Relativism 7–8 Religion/religious 191–192, 200, 208; see also Spiritual Repair 42, 47, 57, 64, 146, 158, 160, 168, 171, 183–184, 205 Replicas 128, 130, 158, 174–175 Replication 128, 130, 158, 174–175; see also Reconstruction; Restoration Resin, acrylic 168–169, 183

Restoration 2, 5–6, 57–64, 166, 173, 177, 183; see also Replication; Reconstruction Re/valuing the past 24–27 Reversibility of interventions 2, 39, 163, 168 Richmond, Alison 182 Riegl, Alois 5–6, 58, 167 Risk 127, 136–137, 179; see also Endangerment; Threat Romanticism (Romantic Movement) 4–5, 155, 166–167, 181, 183, 200 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) 13, 101 Rupture 3–4, 41, 166, 222 Ruskinian notion of historic witness 144, 152 Ruskin, John 5, 39, 57–58, 74, 144, 152, 155, 160–161, 166–167 Ruskin’s approach 58 Sacred 192, 207; see also Divine; Spiritual Scheduled monument 13, 15, 28, 60, 63, 90, 100, 124, 138, 146, 172 Scheduled Monument Clearance Process (SMCP) 13; see also PiCC Scheduling 60, 63, 92–93, 119, 121–122, 124–125; see also Designation; de-schedule 139–140 Schofield, John 188 Schon, Donald 56, 138, 150 Schwartzman, Helen 67 Scientific conservation 165–185 Scottish Government 14, 24 Scottish Historic Environment Policy (SHEP) 26, 45, 55, 74, 122, 148 Scottish National Party (SNP) 14 Scottish Parliament 12, 24, 93 ‘Second-order’ object 128–129, 135, 141 Secular/secularising 191, 195 Seeing 92, 100, 204; see also Sensoriality; Skilled vision;Visibility “Self-documenting” repairs 61 Self-documenting techniques 161 Sengupta, Indra 5 Sensitivity 33, 48, 53, 63, 163 Sensoriality 145, 203 Setting 8, 78, 90–91, 139, 147, 181, 190 Significance, cultural 186–209; see also values; insignificance 143, 193; significance assessment 188; statement of significance 147, 153 Site meetings, importance 67–73 Site visits 88–89, 134–140

248  Index

Skill: crafting authenticity through 143–164; traditional building 156; see also Craft Skilled practice 95, 143–162, 167, 170, 185, 203–204, 214–216; crafting authenticity through 143–164 Skilled vision 143, 167, 203; and practice of stonemasonry 157–159 Slavery 223–224 Slezer, John 200 Slowness 52–53; see also Patience Smith, Laurajane 6 South Gyle Technical Conservation Unit 135 SPAB 5, 61, 155, 161 Spelman, Elizabeth 64 Spiritual 191–196; see also Religion; Divine Stabilisation 129–131, 185 Stakeholders 25, 27, 29, 73, 196–199 Standardisation 123–125, 131, 134, 151, 155 Stasis 207, 221–222; see also continuity; Fixity State, the 39, 85, 121; see also Nation-state Stone 191–196 Stonemasonry 49–50, 66, 110–112, 156–161 Storage 120, 174 Strathern, Marilyn 31, 114 Stuart, Bunderson, J. 102–103 Subjectivity 10, 12, 74, 79, 84–85, 88–89, 94–97, 99, 107, 190, 208, 219, 222; see also Objectivity Sublime 166, 171 Sustainability 14, 25–26, 41, 225 Swenson, Astrid 4, 121 Symbolism 14, 204 Tait, Malcom 144 Teamwork 90, 153, 163 Technical stone conservation 170 Techniques 8, 61, 140, 158, 171, 174, 185, 218 Technologies 10, 14, 120, 124, 129, 174, 217 Temperament 96, 157 Temporalities 23–65, 122, 210–222; atemporality 120; of conservation 10, 34, 218; of tasks 122 Thompson, Jeffery 102–103 Threat 1, 3, 40, 43, 54, 94, 143, 153, 156, 216, 221

Time 68, 140, 194, 216–218; see also Future; Past; Memory; Temporalities Touch 163, 170, 185, 218; see also Sensoriality Tourism 7, 143, 181, 186 Tradition/traditional 27, 44, 143, 155–157, 172, 175 Transformation; see also Change; Decay; Deterioration; institutional 143; material 165–185 Truth/truthfulness 5–8, 97, 152–153, 158–161 Understanding 4, 12, 18, 40, 76, 79, 81, 88, 108, 157, 218 “Unmuddling” through fieldwork 134–140 Urry, John 202 Value 24–27; aesthetic value 6–7, 52, 74–75, 78–79, 85, 106, 120, 149, 152–155, 158–159, 166, 173, 175, 181, 188–200, 203–204; age value 167; archaeological value 191; see also Archaeological approach; architectural value 62, 87; see also Architectural approach; historic value 26–27, 92; intrinsic 8, 14, 30, 38, 103; social value 24, 190–191, 195, 209; spiritual 90, 147, 188, 190 Values-based approach 31, 188, 199, 219 Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1964) 5, 27, 195 Viñas, Muñoz 178 Visibility 120 Visitors 132, 143, 186–187, 189, 195, 199–202;Visitor Services 132, 181 Visual grammar 79 Visualisation 14, 124, 145, 150, 162 Vocation 101–103; conservation profession 103–108 Weather 76, 101, 167, 205 Weathering 40, 126, 146, 149, 168, 183 Western 156, 166; ‘non-Western’ 156 While, Aiden 144 William, Allan M. 69, 71 Work 1–3, 98–115 World Heritage 13 World Heritage Convention (1972) 5 Worship 173, 190–191, 194, 204–206, 208 Wright, Patrick 7, 91