Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Laurajane Smith identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world.

Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved because they have an inherent importance, Smith forcefully demonstrates that heritage value is not inherent in physical objects or places, but rather that these objects and places are used to give tangibility to the values that underpin different communities and to assert and affirm these values.

A practically grounded accessible examination of heritage as a cultural practice, The Uses of Heritage is global in its benefit to students and field professionals alike.

Introduction Part 1: The Idea of Heritage 1. The Discourse of Heritage 2. Heritage as Cultural Process Part 2: Authorised Heritage 3. Authorising Institutions of Heritage 4. The 'Manored' Past: The Banality of Grandiloquence 5. Fellas, Fossils and Country - The Riversleigh Landscape Part 3: Responses to Authorised Heritage 6. Labour Heritage: Performing and Remembering 7. The Slate Wiped Clean? Labour Heritage, Memory and Landscape in Castleford, West Yorkshire, England 8. 'The Issue is Control': Indigenous Politics and the Discourse of Heritage. Conclusion