Moving Forward : Futures for a Preservation Movement

Ned Kaufman challenges the preservation profession to regain its reformist past as a “movement” by connecting historical analysis to the future prospects for the historic preservation field. As American society has become more fragmented and unequal, the US historic preservation field has gradually reflected a more diverse range of new voices, partners, imperatives, and movements. With reference to recent decades of preservation history, Kaufman reveals fault lines within the movement and its relationship to broader society and projects a more progressive politics for the field. His call for social justice as a core purpose of preservation, animated by his work on issues of place, race, and class, is a vanguard of this movement and has pioneered the trenchant critique of “people-centered preservation.”