Methods in Motion: Affecting Heritage Research

Abstract

While this chapter acknowledges the debt owed to studies of the representational, its primary purpose is to argue that much is overlooked by such analyses for the construction of meaning in the semiotic landscapes of heritage. Instead, the chapter points to styles of research practice that capture the essences of encounters and engagement in moments of emergent meaning within the affective and representational milieu of heritage. The chapter argues that such practice is exploratory, disrupting the conventional power of the researcher, and seeking both direct evidence of affect and proxy indicators of it in the intensities and mobility of feeling in time and place. To make this case, the chapter draws upon two case studies: the battlefield at Towton and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. At both sites, our research style favored data that was generated primarily by respondents in situ and moments of encounter or reflection: via photographs, observed behavior and activity, reactions to situations, immersive ‘self-reporting’, ‘walk-throughs’, and reflective statements made in response to provocations of various kinds. Key to these explorations is the notion of ‘encounter’; through it, we focus upon the energies, realities, and responses of actual bodies as they move around and interpret places that present pasts. In doing so, we explore the opportunities and the challenges of developing research styles that facilitate these new approaches to heritage.