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popular imagination (seenationalism). The
historical perspectives transmitted through
these sites were seen to be selective, partial
and distorting. They offered a ‘bogus’ history
that ignored or sanitized what are now taken to
be the less savoury dimensions of the past.
They therefore were contrasted with the
work of professional historians, represented
in textbooks and monographs, where ‘testable
truth is [the] chief hallmark [and]. .. histor-
ians’ credibility depends on their sources
being open to scrutiny’ (Lowenthal, 1997,
p. 120).
This distinction between ‘true history’ and
‘false heritage’ has been challenged from a
variety of directions. Samuel (1984) made an
important case for treating heritage sites as
important loci for retrieving the history of the
marginal, the dispossessed and the subaltern.
Samuel suggests that they can act as important
spaces for representing those voices often
omitted in textbooks. So, for instance, indus-
trial heritage sites can represent the lives and
practices of working-class people in ways that
are provocative and interesting to a popular
audience and not always found in textbook
accounts.post-structuralismsuggests that
all historical narration is perspectival, and
thus queries the distinction betweenrepre-
sentationand reality, between fake heritage
and genuine history, while Urry (1990, p. 82)
claims thatpostmodernisminvolves ‘dissolv-
ing of boundaries, not only between high
and low cultures, but also between different
cultural forms, such as tourism, art, music,
sport, shopping and architecture’ (1990,
p. 82) (see alsoculture).
Recently, geographers have begun to tackle
the performative elements of heritage produc-
tion and consumption (Duncan, 2003;
Hoelscher, 2003: see performativity). In
this work, not only are the narrative structure
and visual elements of a heritage attraction
analysed, but also the impact of the other
senses, and the emotional response of the
audience and the ‘actors’ to the site become
crucial parts of the analysis. This broadens the
discussion beyond the purely visual element of
heritage, to focus attention on the whole em-
bodied experience involved in making and
participating in a heritage site. While this
work is still in its infancy, it is pointing to
important new themes that human geograph-
ers can address in their analysis of the ever-
increasing number of heritage places. njSuggested reading
Hoelscher (2003); Peckham (2003).hermeneutics The study of interpretation
and meaning. Hermeneutics derives from the
Greek word meaning to announce, to clarify
or to reveal. In this sense, hermeneutics has
always been an integral part of the use oflan-
guage. The first stirrings of hermeneutics as a
formal discipline began with the elucidation of
biblical texts: both clarifying God’s word, and
adjudicating among competing interpret-
ations. By the end of the eighteenth century,
with the work of F. Schleiermacher (1768–
1834), hermeneutics broadened to include
the interpretation of historical texts more gen-
erally. In claiming that to understand atext
required scrutiny of the intentions of its
author, Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics impli-
citly challenged the relevance of the emerging
scientific method for the human sciences.
WilhelmDilthey’s(1833–1911)writings both
generalized hermeneutics and made its critique
of natural science explicit. He argued that the
human sciences(Geisteswissenschaften) required a
special methodology, hermeneutics, in order to
understand the meanings of its objects of study.
Those certainly included texts, but under
Dilthey’s view they could include any entity in
which human meaning was invested. In con-
trast, thenatural sciences(Naturwissenschaften)
were not concerned with human meaning,
and consequently applied an abstract universal
vocabulary: the laws of physics, chemical
formulae and geometrical relations.
For Dilthey, meaning is recovered through
practicing the hermeneutic circle. By tacking
back and forth both between our presupposi-
tions and the text itself, as well as between
individual parts of the text and its whole,
meaning and understanding are attained.
This same procedure can be used to clarify
meaning in the non-textual, such as works of
art, the artefacts ofmaterial cultureorcul-
tural landscapes. More generally, the her-
meneutic method is intrinsically circular,
indeterminate and perspectival. It is circular
because it involves a constant movement from
us, the interpreter(s), to the interpreted and
back again, thereby implying that every inter-
pretation is itself reinterpreted. It is indeter-
minate because that loop of interpretation
has no end. And it is perspectival because
interpreters are embedded in their situations,
making their knowledge partial and incom-
plete (cf.situated knowledge). None of this
means that interpretation is merely personal
whim and fancy. Interpretations are always
made against a set of socially agreed upon
canons and texts (albeit interpreted ones)
that are publicly accessible.Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 328 1.4.2009 3:18pmHERMENEUTICS