Slow Heritage : the Importance of Being Uncertain

Association of Critical Heritage Studies
Inaugural Conference : The Re/theorisation of Heritage Studies
Gothenburg, Sweden, June 5-8, 2012

Session SO45 :
Slow Heritage : the Importance of Being Uncertain

Constructivist approaches to heritage today enjoy a wide consensus, but in fact represent a varied and sometimes contradictory set of intellectual moves. All agree that heritage is not "out there" but rather constructed in response to political forces (e.g. 19th and 20th century nationalisms) and economic opportunities (the tourist industry is the main focus here). More recently scholars have turned their attention to resistance : processes of heritagization as a means of resisting neo-liberal projects and pressures ; or, to the contrary, resistance to heritage by the very people (or objects) whose identity it is thought to represent.

These approaches have much to offer but, in our view, they often start off running too soon. Too quick to use the "H" word, they do not spend the necessary time wondering how to delimit "the field". We argue for the need to build in time to ask what is at stake. Who are the actors and the non-actors (passors ?) ? What are the multiple paths taking us from "there" to heritage, including the dead-ends, the bifurcations and the routes still under construction ? Questions such as these also force us to slow down sufficiently as scholars that we might reflect on our positions as citizens. This panel welcomes papers that explore proto-heritage, quasi-heritage, meta-heritage, ex-heritage and even anti-heritage, using fine-grained empirical and/or ethnographic methods.

Please send a title and abstract of no more than 250 words to the session organizers :

Ellen Hertz, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Ellen.Hertz[at]unine.ch
Michel Rautenberg, University of Saint-Etienne, France, michel.rautenberg[at]orange.fr
Jean-Louis Tornatore, University of Lorraine - Metz, France, jl.tornatore[at]free.fr