Principles of Advocacy and Constituencies and a Review of a Recent Example

Abstract

Archaeological and cultural heritage organisations, whether they are more academic membership groups (think EAA, SAA, SAFA, DGUF) or professional associations (e.g. RPA, CIfA) or indeed trade organisations (FAME, ACRA) all choose to devote time and energy to representing what they see as the best interests of their subject matter or their members. Such representation may be more or less overt and may be variously focussed. We often think this means efforts to affect how governments or international organisations act by, for example, advocating that politicians enact legislation with specific characteristics that we consider will have the most beneficial effects upon our chosen fields such as archaeological heritage management. For some years a loose unofficial network of members of various archaeological and cultural heritage organisations have undertaken advocacy aimed at some of the international organisations that are funders of extremely large projects (such as mines, or gas pipelines) with considerable archaeological impacts and in which each of the organisations might have an interest in seeing quality heritage work undertaken to help inform decisions. Experience suggests clarity of authorship, membership – who the constituency represented is – and desired outcomes are important.