Progress in Human Geography 33(4) (2009) pp. 560–575

Book reviews

DOI: 10.1177/0309132509339255

Ashworth, G.J., Graham, B. and Tunbridge, J.E. 2007: Pluralising pasts: heritage, identity and place in multicultural societies. London: Pluto Press. 236 pp. £75 cloth, £19.99 paper. ISBN: 978 0 7453 2286 5 cloth, 978 0 7453 2285 8 paper.

At fi rst glance, and after only a perfunctory overview, this reviewer misperceived Plural-ising pasts as a complex text with copious jargon that would turn off most readers. However, only a few pages into the book, it became quite clear that it is thoughtfully written, well organized, thoroughly argued, and accessible at many levels. In fact, the book is based on a sound conceptual framework of types of multicultural society and their crea-tion and treatment of heritage, and thus contributes to a broadened understanding of heritage in a context that is all too often ignored in this expanding and multidisci-plinary fi eld.

The book is comprised of 11 chapters in three parts: the conceptual context; a typology of plural societies; and heritage in plural societies. The fi rst four chapters provide the conceptual underpinnings for the rest of the book, pro-vide a solid literature review, defi ne terms and ideas, and set the context for the remainder of the work. This section is useful, but is not as well elucidated for fl ow as the remaining seven chapters. Nonetheless, it is important because it sets the parameters for the typology and identifi es the rationale for writing such a tome. Additionally, it makes a good case that

tourism is not the only consumer of heritage – a point that many tourism scholars often fail to realize. Likewise, it demonstrates what this reviewer has been arguing for many years, that living and contemporary cultures and cultural practices are also part of the inherited past (therefore heritage) – again something many cultural studies specialists have long elected to ignore.

Chapter 5 is excellent and the core of the book’s conceptual framework. It suggests fi ve types, or models, of plural societies, namely assimilationist/integrated/single-core; melting pot; core+; pillar; and salad bowl/rainbow/mosaic. Each of these is well defined with illustrated empirical examples, and the role and handling of heritage within each of the fi ve types is briefl y introduced. The following fi ve chapters deal with heritage within each multisocietal model in much more depth and with considerably more detail. Because of space constraints, the fi ve models cannot be reiterated here, but it should be noted that they are brilliantly put together and clearly conceived. In this regard, the book and its com-ponent parts do make an additional contri-bution to current knowledge of heritage and the ways in which it is perceived.

In addition to its effectiveness in recon-ceptualizing multiple heritages, the book goes a step further to reiterate and reify many para-digms that are in line with current thinking today. First and foremost, heritage is highly political in nature. Whenever one heritage is selected for show or preservation, others are by necessity left out, or ‘disinherited’, which might be interpreted as ‘our heritage is more

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Book reviews 561

important than yours’. Thus, the very essence of heritage production and consumption is about power and power relations, and this is nowhere more visible than in pluralist societies with their multifaceted strata of diasporas, hybridity, social identity crises, transitoriness, and states of being in in-between places and times. Second is the inevitability of place. Time and space are inseparable. Heritage, whether national or personal, cannot be seen in isolation from the landscape or physical setting where history occurred or where heritage occurs today. Third, heritage and identity are indivisible as well. People and societies are inextricably linked to the past, and societies constantly look backward to understand their current and future group and individual place in the world. This is one of the reasons for the recent trend in the growth of community museums and heritage courses being taught more frequently in post-secondary educational institutions. Finally there is the long history of heritage focusing on the elite landscapes of the past at the ex-clusion of the normative. Scholars, curators, and other observers of heritage are beginning to realize that few people in history lived in castles and palaces, worshipped in grandiose cathedrals, and drove gem-studded carriages. Instead ‘landscapes of the ordinary’ are begin-ning to take precedence over landscapes of the gentry in the production and consumption of heritage today, being manifested in the preservation of rural landscapes, villages, factories, shipyards, mines, and other such settings of everyday life. These are only a few of the fascinating issues that Pluralising pasts explores in its 236 pages.

As noted previously, the fi rst four chapters do not fl ow as freely as the remaining ones, and they are a bit repetitious in some respects. However, these are only very minor critic-isms of a book that is otherwise incredibly insightful, valuable, and well worth its cost. It is an absolute must for researchers and students of heritage studies. The authors, Ashworth, Graham and Tunbridge, should be congratulated on a nice piece of work. They

have done it again! They have succeeded in building upon their previous works to expand defi nitions and meanings of the present-day use of the past in plural societies. Important about this is that most heritage writers, par-ticularly in the realm of tourism, one of the largest consumers of heritage, commonly work under the simple assumption (usually unintentionally) that heritage is uniform, unidimensional, and objective. Pluralising pasts proves otherwise.

Dallen J. TimothyArizona State University

DOI: 10.1177/0309132509339254

Bavo (Bureau for Architectural Theory), editor 2007: Urban politics now: re-imagining democracy in the neoliberal city. Amsterdam: NAi Publishers. 240 pp. €27 paper. ISBN: 978 90 5662 616 7.

This book is a collection from a conference on ‘Psychoanalysis, Urban Theory and the City of Late-Capitalism’ held in 2005. Bavo is a Dutch research collective concerned with the built environment and art. The book’s avowed intent is political: to develop strategies for greater democracy and em-ancipation in cities of the rich countries. Of the 13 chapters, six are general discussions of contemporary (urban) politics, four are focused on consumption, and three discuss built-environment mega projects and neigh-bourhood ‘regeneration’.

There is a variety of theoretical approaches. Despite the title, psychoanalysis is the con-sistent theoretical viewpoint in only one chapter, that by MacCannell on building form; it appears marginally in chapters by Žižek, Soja and Stavrakakis. Five chapters are within the political-economy tradition – two on global and local protests and three on property development. The remaining chapters use poststructuralist cultural-political theory: the four chapters on consumption, and two on

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