UC San Diego

There is a prevailing discourse in cultural heritage management which privileges the investigation, interpretation, and conservation of heritage sites by a small group of heritage experts (Smith 2006). However, some heritage experts are challenging this discourse and recommending alternative heritage principles such as multivocality, providing more public access to heritage sites, and encouraging non-heritage experts to define their own value and meaning of heritage (Smith and Wobst 2006a; Liebmann and Rizvi 2008). Such alternative discourses are gaining the attention of heritage management authorities, but there has been no comprehensive comparative analysis of case studies where alternative heritage management principles are an integral part of the research design to determine whether they are successful and what characteristics of such projects are contributing to their success. A cross-case comparative analysis of eleven heritage management projects with a common goal of recording or monitoring sites threatened by climate change reveals that including principles from alternative heritage discourses is linked to better heritage management outcomes