Heritage Industry Quotes

“To be completely ignorant of the collective past seems to me to be another state of amnesia; you would be untethered, adrift in time. Which is why all societies have sought some kind of memory bank, whether by way of folklore, story-telling, recitation of the ancestors--from Homer to Genesis. And why the heritage industry does so well today; most people may not be particularly interested in the narrative of the past, in the detail or the discussion, but they are glad to know that it is there.”
― Penelope Lively, Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time

“For 40 years, the prevailing mindset of the industry was that people wouldn't pay $30 for a premium cotton T shirt made in America. They'd sooner spend eighteen dollars for a pack of six-- three dollars a shirt-- made by Hanes in the Dominican Republic. That mindset had shut down the mills. That mindset had cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and gutted once flourishing communities. It had caused a cheapening of quality.”
― Steven Kurutz, American Flannel: How a Band of Entrepreneurs Are Bringing the Art and Business of Making Clothes Back Home