Challenging the problem of un-democratic participation: from destruction to re-construction of heritage

PurposeThe present study aims to contribute to the understanding of digital participation in heritage collections as a democratizing practice by identifying and challenging silent assumptions concerning how the insufficient influence of participants is conceived of as a problem.Design/methodology/approachThree carefully selected scholarly texts incorporating problematizations of insufficient participatory agency were analyzed in detail using a method inspired by Carol Bacchi's approach “what's the problem represented to be?” (WPR), with special emphasis on analysis of ontological elements of the problematizations.FindingsParticipation is problematized based on the assumption that participatory agency risks jeopardizing the protection of heritage and leads to parts of the public memory being forgotten. To challenge the idea that participatory agency is destructive, the present article argues for elaborating an understanding of what forgetting entails for heritage. Framing forgetting as a potentially both harmful and generative concept enables a separation of destructive forgetting (e.g. destruction of historical evidence) and constructive forgetting (re-contextualization).Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on a limited number of texts, and problematizations are investigated in relation to a specific perspective on participatory agency.Practical implicationsBy understanding forgetting as a potentially beneficial activity for representation and heritage construction, the article provides a conceptual rationale for facilitating re-contextualization in the design of multi-layered information structures for heritage collections.Originality/valueThere is little earlier research on the silent assumptions that affect how participation is understood and implemented.