Caring encounters

Scholars recognise and advocate a relationship between heritage and ethics, but what is the heritage-making process, and how do the relationships work? I address this problem in three ways. First, I draw upon the oral history project I have conducted on the island of Leros in Greece, focusing on the heritage of the psychiatric hospital there in terms of the architectural, emotional, and social traces that have been left on Leros residents. Leros’ hospital has a multi-layered heritage whose ethical conundra have arisen through the heritage-making process. Second, theoretically, the dramatic case of Leros invites us to distinguish between interpretation and understanding. I argue that the latter is a prerequisite of the former. I highlight that lack of sufficient understanding leads to misapprehension of what is selected for interpretation, and this therefore undermines the significance of what is transmitted, as heritage, to the future. If heritage interpretation is about revealing relationships with the past, then lack of sufficient understanding can conceal who the significant other(s) are who might be harmed or benefitted during the heritage-making process. Third, I propose adoption of an informed ethics of care, which will provide the needed framework for helping us to navigate the ethical considerations that arise in heritage making overall. The ethics of care is rooted in the human capacity to form relationships with others and with the environment. The human capacity to form relationships shapes our capacity to act ethically. If heritage is about relationships, and understanding of it entails grasping how these relationships work, then an ethics of care is anchored in the idea of relationality and the significance of context, which together delineate human relationships that can accommodate the ethical nuances arising from the fluid context of heritage.