The crowding out of social values: on the reasons why social values so consistently lose out to other values in heritage management

ABSTRACT Heritage is a public value, which is determined by many other values. These values can be mutually dependent and reinforcing, but can also displace or nullify each other. As public values are arguments, this can result in discursive struggles when discussing whether something should be valued as ‘heritage’. It turns out that the proponents of so-called ‘social values’ often lose such battles. Why is it that precisely their arguments are so vulnerable? In seeking an answer to this question, it is illuminating to look at discursive struggles from the perspective of Herbert Gottweis’ Argumentative Policy Analysis. It is by applying his rendering of Aristotle’s categories of ‘logos’, ‘pathos’ and ‘ethos’ that we discover that proponents of social values, unlike exponents of an ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’, are often less capable of constructing a logically consistent and convincing narrative. This also affects their ability to appeal to the emotions of the public (‘pathos’). Having less legitimacy than government-backed experts they also lack ‘ethos’. If social values were ‘lived’ by a community, they could be much stronger. Yet, as they often do not exist ‘out there’, but need to be constructed during discursive struggles, they are perceived as less authentic, consequently less convincing.