Historic Preservation - Diane Barthel

Historic preservation is a cultural movement gaining momentum and
adherents throughout Europe and the United States. How do we decide what
to preserve and how to preserve? Who benefits from the efforts of
preservationists, curators, developers, and other ""symbolic bankers"" to
safeguard an increasing variety of structures for future
generations? Diane Barthel raises these and other questions in this
important new book. Taking a comparative approach, Barthel finds that
preservation in Britain has largely been an elite enterprise aimed at
preserving traditional values. In the United States, by contrast, the
pattern is much more dynamic and democratic, though also more permeated
by commercialism. Is preservation becoming another means of consuming
history, like media representations or ""historic"" shopping outlets? Or
does it have a special significance as a very tangible means of getting
in touch with our collective and individual pasts? These and other
issues--including war and remembrance, agrarian and industrial
preservation, and religious preservation in a secular
society--demonstrate the significance of what Barthel calls ""the
Preservation Project"" and why we all have a stake in how our history is
reconstructed and interpreted.