EL PROBLEMA DE LAS “CLASES MEDIAS”: LA PEQUEÑA BURGUESÍA

By the latter half of the twentieth century the conservation ethic was firmly established in archaeology, art history, and related disciplines and had long received the

imprimatur of the state. It is easy to see why. The state's interest in antiquities as emblems was based on the materiality of these vestiges. Ancient 'authentic' material fabric is valorized by archaeologists and art historians because it constitutes the

evidence on which they base their studies. It is valorized by the state because the fabric constitutes the emblem. While the state may be less concerned with the exactitude of material authenticity - often it is satisfied with the 'look' of age rather than the fact of age - it is nevertheless committed, within certain limits, to ensuring the continued physical existence of those monuments which it has embraced as the nation's patrimony.

But the conservation ethic as we know it was established in the teeth of strong opposition from groups whose desire for the antique actually ran counter to the notion of conservation. The protection o f ancient sites, for instance, meant depriving

antiquarian collectors of access to them. Ruskin's (1963: 199) well known complaint, in the mid-nineteenth century, against the fashion of 'restoration' which had seen extensive rebuilding of historical buildings in an attempt to imitate or resurrect a hypothetically pure style (e.g., Gothic) pitted him against the popular ideas of Viollet-

le-Duc (cf. Molina-Montes 1982). This conflict was over the privileging of the surviving fabric of a building against an idea of what the building was intended to be. To Ruskin it was the difference between honesty and a lie (1963: 200). The dispute was reconciled 'officially', and in favour of the former, by the Charter of Athens (1931) and the Charter of Venice (1964).

It was to resist the nineteenth century practice of 'restoring' Britain's churches and cathedrals back to a pure 'Gothic' that William Morris founded the Society for the Protection o f Ancient Buildings founded in 1877. Earlier, the Society of Antiquaries had been active in agitating against this practice (Evans 1956). Meetings were arranged with the clergy and chapters of churches which were planning restorations in order to give them guidance. One clergyman's response (in 1855) to the Society's policy scorned what he saw as an endeavour to inscribe an antiquarian significance on churches at the expense of their role in a functioning religion:

I fear it throws an unjust and an unwarranted stigma on many persons who have during the last 10 or 12 years been anxiously desirous of promoting the glory o f God and the spread of his gospel by affording increased and

improved accommodation in our Churches for our increasing population, particularly for the labouring classes. Our Churches are not set apart for the collection of antiquities or merely for the preservation of the records of past ages, but for the worship of Almighty God.

Evans 1956: 312

More important in the clash between antiquarians and the church than whether conservation should take priority over function was a clash of tastes: the clergy and congregations believed they were beautifying their churches by modernizing them. The work was usually funded locally through donations collected by the churches' restoration committees and it is hardly surprising that these committees doggedly resisted the Society's attempts to impose its antiquarian sensibility on them. In the wave of 'restorations' which swept the country in the last decades o f the century - many of the ancient churches in London were 'under sentence' by a 'vandal bishop' (Evans 1956: 335) - the conservationists seem to have lost more often than they prevailed.

The restorationist Victorian churchmen are among the pet villains of writers on heritage conservation (e.g., Chamberlin 1979: 50-51) and the clash is seen as a closed chapter in the history of the conservation movement. Two things are significant in this. Firstly, it ignores the fact that the conflict between clergy and conservationists persists into the present day, based on the same competing assertions: on the one hand

the assertion of the primacy of worship and, on the other, the assertion of the primacy of aesthetics (Binney 1977). Secondly, it undermines the claim of modem heritage management (as espoused in ICOMOS guidelines) to be sensitive to the social significance of heritage properties in the community at large. Where the heritage industry runs up against a discourse which is fundamentally different - a Christianity, for instance, struggling to appear relevant - and where the conservation ethic is not in evidence, its claims to universality are shown to be threadbare.

One o f the few practitioners to admit to the mutability of the conservation concept, E.R. Chamberlin, poses a question:

What caused this profound shift in human thinking whereby the physical shell of an institution - what the old chop-logicians would have called its accidence - has become endowed with the same importance as its substance? Julius

insisted throughout that he was 'restoring' St Peter's: quite clearly he held in his mind's eye a picture of the basilica of St Peter's as an indestructible entity that could change its physical form a score of times if need be, without affecting its essential nature in the slightest.

Chamberlin 1979: 39

Chamberlin's query which, incidentally, he leaves unanswered, must necessarily be of fundamental importance to those engaged in the practice of archaeological or

architectural conservation. In the present chapter I have tried to answer it myself or, at least, provide a background in which the answer might be sought. Is it, I wonder, significant that one of the only occasions on which the question has been raised since Chamberlin's book has been in relation to China (Wei and Aas 1989)? Is it that the shift Chamberlin speaks of in Europe has not occurred in China or has only occurred partially and at an elite level? In the following chapters I look to the non-West for clarification.

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