This volume developed from a session on ‘Community Heritage’ held at the inaugural conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), hosted by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in June 2012. The conference called on participants to challenge traditional concepts of heritage, to push boundaries and to embrace strategies for the active participation of the full range of stakeholders in cultural and natural heritage management. The contributions to this book do just that and explore, from a personal to an international scale, the intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogues surrounding the use, practice and management of both tangible and intangible heritage through case studies from across the globe.

Bringing together practitioners within archaeology, anthropology, urban planning, human geography, cultural resource management (CRM) and museology, the volume aims to build on the existing debate and reflect how heritage discourse is being increasingly re-theorised in terms of experience. While exploring the organic, evolving and unpredictable nature of working with communities, the volume focuses on emerging discourse which represents a shifting balance of power as once-marginalised stakeholders are taking control of the constitution, representation and management of heritage as they experience it, both with or without ‘professional facilitation’. Thus, by critically engaging with heritage studies and acknowledging the benefits of diversifying the voices involved in the representation and management of the past, the volume calls on readers to embrace a view of cultural and natural heritage in which meanings and notions of best practice can shift over time and space.