Delaktighet En kritisk analys av kunskapsinsamling för kulturmiljöunderlag

Abstract

This essay examines how evaluations of cultural environments can be created against the current objectives summarised as everyone's participation. The question is justified in light of previous research demonstrating how practical work is often characterised by a conservative approach towards cultural environments as objects whose intrinsic values are static and can only be defined by antiquarian expertise. The current prevailing approach to cultural environments is instead focused on the environment and landscape; understanding its values as being in constant change and seeking a participatory perspective. To investigate how constructing an evaluation can relate to the current objectives, a case study of the former Nylöse parish house in Gamlestaden, Göteborg, is performed. In the study actor-network theory (ANT) is applied as a tool and with it the methodological principle of following the actors. This procedure means that all actors traced in the network of the parish house are therefore participating, and the qualities they observe should be understood as actor-network effects; as consequences of the translations. The qualities that appear show, among others, two fundamentally different understandings that can be related to Latour's distinction between matters of fact and matters of concern, through which the result of the first the parish house becomes a failure and of the latter a success. The conclusion reached is that the ANT is a relevant tool to apply in the work of creating evaluations since this avoids laying down categories in advance, which differs from the traditional object-oriented approach. The implication of this is twofold: firstly, everyone’s participation is enabled, and secondly, job-specific concepts that can obstruct communication are excluded. The question that arises is whether the cultural-historical expertise may become less important, but as the study shows the problem is not the expertise in itself but the application of it in advance, i.e. before everyone's participation is made possible. The results of the study show the possibility to gather complex, heterogeneous, inclusive and well-founded knowledge for evaluations of cultural environments by following all the actors and afterwards applying culturalhistorical perspectives.