The elite and the everyday in the Australian heritage field

This chapter examines contemporary engagements with heritage as captured by the Australian Cultural Fields questionnaire and household interviews. Drawing on responses to questions about heritage in our survey instrument, the chapter begins by offering reflections on who knows, likes and visits a range of officially recognised genres of heritage. The chapter reveals that some places of heritage, such as those emblematic of Australian national identity, exhibit an extraordinary ‘pull’ when it comes to gathering people to them; that is, they are noticed by a wide range of people. Other places seem only to service and represent mature-aged Anglo-Australians, positioned within the middle and upper classes. A select few places appear almost invisible, but no less remarkable. Such differences in taste, knowledge and participation are, of course, a function of habitual dispositions that are historically constituted. Using material gathered through the project’s household interviews, the chapter thus turns to consider the socially constituted sensibilities that mediate how people engage with, and are affected by, heritage. While the chapter continues to consider engagements with highly visible forms of heritage, of primary interest here are the sensibilities that sustain engagements with heritage on a smaller scale, such as through family traditions and family life