Journal
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Volume 18, Issue 2, Pages 174-192Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/1469605318759713
Keywords
Digital heritage; political identities; Brexit; imperialism; big data; Roman; pre-Roman; Medieval
Categories
Funding
- UK Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/N006151/1]
- project 'Iron Age and Roman Heritages: Exploring ancient identities in modern Britain', (Ancient Identities in Modern Britain)
- AHRC [AH/N006151/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article assesses the role of the pre-modern past in the construction of political identities relating to the UK's membership in the European Union by examining how materials and ideas from Iron Age to Early Medieval Britain and Europe were leveraged by those who discussed the topic of Brexit in over 1.4 million messages published in dedicated Facebook pages. Through a combination of data-intensive and qualitative investigations of textual data, we identify the heritages' invoked in support of pro- or anti-Brexit sentiments. We show how these heritages are centred around myths of origins, resistance and collapse that incorporate tensions and binary divisions. We highlight the strong influence of past expert practices in shaping such deeply entrenched dualistic thinking and reflect over the longue duree agency of heritage expertise. This is the first systematic study of public perceptions and experience of the past in contemporary society undertaken through digital heritage research fuelled by big data. As such, the article contributes novel methodological approaches and substantially advances theory in cultural heritage studies. It is also the first published work to analyse the role of heritage in the construction of political identities in relation to Brexit via extensive social research.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available