Abstract
2014 has seen much popular and academic debate about the proper form of commemoration regarding the First World War’s centenary in Britain, together with some reflection as to the meaning and contemporary relevance of this commemorative process. Much of this debate has revolved around the “proper format” of public display, the nature of “celebration,” the apparent “duty to pay respect” and/or “mourn,” together with the form and prominence of the centenary within the National School Curriculum. While much of the academic debate has tended to have a critical edge, which has pointed towards the politicized and contingent nature of this debate, there has been less consideration of how this debate works in a comparative standpoint. Taking a comparative critical heritage perspective, this chapter investigates how the commemoration of the First World War in Britain has developed alongside commemorative and other events, developing an appreciation of the power of purposeful nostalgia at different scales. Making room for nonelite perspectives and potentialities, the chapter reflects on how contemporary heritage politics might find connections between the centennial commemoration of war, the potential reformulation of the nation-state, and a resonance of emancipatory moments.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
This process of naturalization and “taken-for-grantedness” among state actors or organizations is a development of Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus; the generation and structuring of principles, practices, and representations, which are objectively regulated without obedience to rules, adapted to goals without conscious aiming, and collectively orchestrated without being the product of conscious direction (see Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72; Harvey, 2000, p. 49).
- 2.
In the UK, “Remembrance Sunday” is the official day used to commemorate the military and civilian contributions to the two World Wars and later conflicts. It is always held on the nearest Sunday to November 11th, in memory to the First World War armistice.
- 3.
This dream of preservation reflects an assumption and tacit demand that certain “sacred duties” should be untouchable for future generations.
- 4.
Speech details available at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-at-imperial-war-museum-on-first-world-war-centenary-plans (last accessed 30 June 2015).
- 5.
The charities benefitting from this installation included Cobseo (Armed Forces community support), Combat Stress (specialising in PTSD), Coming Home (connected to the Haig Housing Trust), Help for Heroes (veteran support group), The Royal British Legion, and SSFA (veteran’s support group). See https://poppies.hrp.org.uk/about-the-charities for more details (last accessed 29 April 2015). Some of the remaining ceramic poppies are also going to be incorporated into the Imperial War Museums’ collection.
- 6.
By Christmas 1914, conscription had yet to occur in the UK. The soldiers involved were all “battle-hardened” professionals, many with a long prewar military career behind them.
- 7.
For instance, Channel 4’s Not Forgotten, first aired in 2006 (and re-aired in 2014), partly followed a Who Do You Think You Are? format, following the family history experiences of contemporary relatives of those executed (see http://www.channel4.com/programmes/not-forgotten/episode-guide/series-2/); Chloe Dewe Matthews’ exhibition of photographs (ongoing), taken at the exact spot of execution 100 years after the event (see: http://www.chloedewemathews.com/shot-at-dawn/). BBC 3’s Our World War historical drama (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022twsy) utilized televisual techniques pioneered during the BBC 3’s Afghanistan-based war drama, Our War (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vhs86). All websites in this note were last accessed 9 April 2015.
- 8.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMhjEaVyGA&noredirect=1The Killing of Private Harvard (last accessed 24 February 2015).
- 9.
See www.ukdf.org.uk for more information on this group (last accessed 24 February 2015). Described by the conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper as “a group which organises meetings between key players in the defence industry” (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/4348729/labour-peers-Robin-Ashby-profile.html) (last accessed 13 February 2015), the UKDF has a “no-lobbying” policy.
- 10.
James Foley became the first Western journalist to be so executed, sometime around 19 August 2014, a month after the UKDF execution reenactment was uploaded.
References
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Barthel-Bouchier, D. (2015). Heritage and climate change: Organizational conflicts and conundrums. In D. C. Harvey & J. Perry (Eds.), The future of heritage as climates change: Loss, adaptation and creativity (pp. 151–166). London: Routlege.
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
Blunt, A. (2003). Collective memory and productive nostalgia: Anglo-Indian homemaking at McCluskieganj. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21, 717–738.
Bonnett, A., & Alexander, C. (2013). Mobile nostalgias: Connecting visions of the urban past, present and future amongst ex-residents. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(3), 391–402.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1994). Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. Sociological Review, 12(1), 1–18.
Connelly, M. (2014). Sainsbury’s Christmas truce advert confuses understanding of the First World War. BBC History Magazine: History Extra. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.historyextra.com/news/first-world-war/sainsbury%E2%80%99s-christmas-truce-advert-%E2%80%98confuses-understanding%E2%80%99-first-world-war.
Daugbjerg, M. (2014). Patchworking the past: Materiality, touch and the assembling of ‘experience’ in American Civil War re-enactment. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(7–8), 724–741.
Daugbjerg, M., Eisner, R. S., & Knudsen, B. T. (2014). Re-enacting the past: Vivifying heritage ‘again’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(7–8), 681–687.
DiMagio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1991). The iron cage revisited: Institutional iso-morphism and collective rationality. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), New institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 63–82). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gentry, K. (2015). The pathos of conservation: Raphael Samuel and the politics of heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(6), 561–576.
Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical approaches. London: Routledge.
Harvey, D. C. (2000). Continuity, authority and the place of heritage in the medieval world. Journal of Historical Geography, 25(1), 47–59.
Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(4), 319–338.
Harvey, D. C. (2015). Heritage and scale: Settings, boundaries and relations. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(6), 577–593.
King, A. (2010). The Afghan War and ‘postmodern’ memory: Commemoration and the dead of Helmand. The British Journal of Sociology, 61(1), 1–25.
Legg, S. (2005). Contesting and surviving memory: Space, nation and nostalgia in Les Lieux de Mémoire. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 481–504.
MacLeod, G. (2002). Identity, hybridity and the institutionalisation of territory: On the geohistory of Celtic devolution. In D. C. Harvey, R. A. Jones, N. McInroy, & C. Milligan (Eds.), Celtic geographies: Old cultures, new times (pp. 53–68). London: Routledge.
Mycock, A. (2014). The politics of the Great War centenary in the United Kingdom. In S. Sumatojo & B. Wellings (Eds.), Nation, memory and Great War commemoration: Mobilizing the past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (pp. 99–118). Bern: Peter Lang.
Mycock, A., Sumatojo, S., & Wellings, B. (2014). ‘The centenary to end all centenaries’: The Great War, nation and commemoration. In S. Sumatojo & B. Wellings (Eds.), Nation, memory and Great War commemoration: Mobilizing the past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (pp. 1–24). Bern: Peter Lang.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history. Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 10–18.
Paasi, A. (2009). The resurgence of the ‘region’ and ‘regional identity’: Theoretical perspectives and empirical observations on regional dynamics in Europe. Review of International Studies, 35(S1), 121–146.
Pendlebury, J. (2013). Conservation values, the authorised heritage discourse and the conservation-planning assemblage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(7), 709–727.
Reynolds, D. (2013). The long shadow: The Great War and the twentieth century. London: Simon and Schuster.
Robertson, I. (Ed.). (2012). Heritage from below. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Samuel, R. (1994). Theatres of memory. Volume 1: Past and present in contemporary culture. London: Verso.
Saunders, N. (2013). The poppy: From ancient Egypt to Flanders Fields to Afghanistan. London: Oneworld.
Smith, L. (2006). Uses of heritage. London: Routledge.
Smith, L., & Campbell, G. (2011). ‘Don’t mourn, organise’: Heritage and memory in Castleford, West Yorkshire. In L. Smith, P. A. Shackel, & G. Campbell (Eds.), Heritage, labour and the working classes (pp. 85–105). London: Routledge.
Sumatojo, S., & Wellings, B. (Eds.). (2014). Nation, memory and Great War commemoration: Mobilizing the past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Bern: Peter Lang.
Todman, D. (2005). The Great War: Myth and memory. London: Continuum.
Vallestrand, H. E. (2015). Text and object: The bus shelter that became cultural heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(1), 81–98.
Wilson, R. (2013). Cultural heritage of the Great War in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Wilson, R. (2014a). Sad shires and no man’s land: First World War frames of reference in the British media representation of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Media, War and Conflict, 7(3), 291–308.
Wilson, R. (2014b). It still goes on: Football and the heritage of the Great War in Britain. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 9(3), 197–211.
Wilson, R. (2015). Still fighting in the trenches: ‘War discourse’ and the memory of the First World War in Britain. Memory Studies. doi:10.1177/1750698015575174.
Winter, T. (2013). Clarifying the critical in Critical Heritage Studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6), 532–545.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harvey, D.C. (2017). Critical Heritage Debates and the Commemoration of the First World War: Productive Nostalgia and Discourses of Respectful Reverence During the Centenary. In: Silverman, H., Waterton, E., Watson, S. (eds) Heritage in Action. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42870-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42870-3_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42868-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42870-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)