Scaling Heritage: Situated Policy in an Expanded Ontology

Policy contains a certain political ontology; on behalf of others, for their benefit, to direct their subsequent action. This is a political ontology that can work at any scale, including the local. Yet ‘local’ also smuggles in other ontologies. Local can also mean not universal, not replicable, not lasting. In this chapter an idea of ‘local policy’ as ‘situated policy’ is developed, drawing on Donna Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’ and Bruno Latour and Michael Callon’s ideas of scale. ‘Situated policy’ offers an analytical means of working with the intrinsic political ontology of policy—that policy seeks to set a direction and direct others’ behaviour—while investing it with a self-conscious recognition that all policy is itself produced in a local place and that to have impact policy will need to negotiate with multiple other locals and different political ontologies as it meets the ground.