Resilience in Heritage Conservation and Heritage Tourism

Resilience, defined as the capacity of a system to bounce-back, adapt or heal, from impacts, disturbances or challenges, is becoming an increasingly important concept of academic study in a range of knowledge areas. Most research on the notion of resilience in relation to the built environment is derived from an ecology perspective. Heritage conservation and heritage tourism, two knowledge areas sharing heritage sites as their common object of study, have also made the connection with the concept of resilience. However, the use of this concept has focused on an ecology approach as well. This study develops the notion of resilience in heritage conservation and heritage tourism in order to expand its potential as an emerging concept beyond ecology concerns. Using logical argumentation as the main research strategy, two processes are developed: First an analysis of the use of resilience in a range of knowledge fields, including heritage conservation and tourism studies, was performed in order to recognize conceptual and operational challenges for its application in relation to heritage sites. Findings allowed identifying that limitations of translating existing resilience frameworks directly from other knowledge areas were associated to ontological and epistemological assumptions that favor partial accounts of what heritage sites understood as systems are. Second, contributions of an integrated approach between heritage conservation and heritage tourism, and a ‘new materialism’ approach focused on Levi Bryant’s Onto-cartography, were proposed in order to expand the potential of the notion of resilience to address increasing challenges of diverse sort in heritage sites. Multiple case examples were discussed throughout the chapters that contributed to theoretical insights