The Dynamics of Heritage : History, Memory and the Highland Clearances

Focusing on the interaction between history and memory and, in particular, on museums as a memory medium, this book deals with the memorialization of the Highland Clearances over the twentieth century. It presents a typology of Clearance narratives and shows that the politics of the land has impacted on interpretive repertoires, whilst Clearance exhibitions increasingly focus on a transnational perspective foregrounding Highlanders and Islanders abroad.

There has been much academic interest in the role of museums as places where understanding of the past is shaped and legitimised for a wide and increasingly diverse public. This book focuses on the museum representations of the Highland Clearances - a much neglected aspect of one of the most disputed and politically-charged issues in modern Scottish history. Drawing together a range of inter-disciplinary themes and notions, it considers the cultural legacy of the period, brings to light the socially and historically conditioned meanings and values encapsulated in museum narratives of the Clearances, and shows the significance of collective memory in the negotiations inherent in heritage work. Examining both national and local museums in Scotland and concluding with comparisons with Australian museums of migration, Dynamics of Heritage contributes to our understanding of the processes of heritage construction, and its relationship to issues of memory and other modes of engagement with the past.