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Module 7: Cultural Heritage/Patrimony
Lausanne, March 27./28. 2009 Organizer: Prof. Irene Maffi, UniL During the last decades cultural heritage has become a very sensitive topic. States, local communities, and minorities have started to claim their right to define, select and valorize their cultural heritage, be it material or immaterial. Following the emergence of this new phenomena, starting from the 1980s anthropologists, historians, art historians, sociologists and architects have started paying attention to the discourses and practices of the social actors who operate in this field. They have thus founded a new scientific object or at least a new conceptual instrument to look at societies. As a consequence an important literature on the history, meanings and values of cultural heritage in Europe and the United States has developed. More recent studies have focused on other areas of the world as for example Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. They have focused on the one hand on national cultural policies, on the other on the strategies adopted by local communities to counterbalance or to oppose the heritage practices and narratives of the central State. The importance of the notion of cultural heritage derives from the fact that in the contemporary world it has become a transnational paradigm, an "ideascape" as Arjun Appadurai would put it, which is adopted by almost every local and national community and adapted to local contexts. The transnational nature and the hybrid character of the forms assumed by the processes of patrimonialization make cultural heritage a very significant object of analysis. Furthermore, cultural heritage constitutes a complex arena crossed by several social agencies: it is at the same time a historical, cultural, political and economic field with multiple dimensions where many social factors are at stake. Finally, it is a place of encroachment of local, national and international agencies characterized by the fluidity and the complexity of contemporary cultural and political transnational fluxes. Invited experts Michael Herzfeld |
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