In this textbook we see heritage in action in indigenous and vernacular communities in urban
development and regeneration schemes in expressions of community in acts of nostalgia and
memorialization and counteracts of forgetting in museums and other spaces of representation
in tourism in the offices of those making public policy and in the politics of identity and
claims toward cultural property. Whether renowned or local tangible or intangible the entire
heritage enterprise at whatever scale is by now inextricably embedded in value. The global
context requires a sanguine approach to heritage in which the so-called critical stance is not
just theorized in a rarefied sphere of scholarly lexical gymnastics but practically engaged
and seen to be doing things in the world.
