Cultural Heritage

Silvia De Nardis, Sapienza University of Rome

Definition

Cultural Heritage (CH) encompasses a diverse range of tangible and intangible cultural and creative expressions, encompassing natural features, landscapes, urban and rural environments, as well as digital products. CH regards the legacy of the past, alongside the cultural signs of the present, including new creations that will become heritage for future generations. It embraces cultural assets such as artefacts, monuments or sites, including traditions, languages, crafts, knowledge and social practices. This notion also contains digital resources, both products/services natively digital and derived from digitisation processes such as virtual museums, videos, podcasts or digital archives (European Commission, 2019). 

CH is interpreted in a dynamic sense as an ensemble of goods to be safeguarded, protected and conserved, but also to be promoted and enhanced to foster positive societal change. It describes a strategic set of shared resources to connect space, people, functions, and activities acting as triggers of sustainable local development. CH refers to a source of collective value, potentially able to meet emerging public needs, promoting cultural diversity, and strengthening identity and social inclusion. It refers to a practice that involves local communities in creatively preserving the past and, at the same time, imagining new ways of thinking, acting, and living. Innovative heritage-led services in education, culture or health arise, promoting new socioeconomic opportunities. This definition implies remaining open to newness and embracing co-creation processes that involve the public and private sectors, cultural and creative industries, civil society, inhabitants, and citizens (Council of Europe, 2005).

Background information and contemporary debate

Cultural Heritage represents a sociopolitical and symbolic concept resulting from historical processes of selection and reassembly of values, ideas, and meanings assigned to human products or environmental attributes. It emerges as an entanglement of physical, functional, and representational properties, as well as a values system socially and politically shaped.

The evolution of the CH notion is conventionally framed within a three-phase periodisation. The first lies in the 19th century, when the idea of national heritage to be protected began to take hold, consolidating protection and preservation objectives of countries’ civil and monumental heritage. During the second half of the 20th century, the broader concept of World Heritage and the vision of heritage as something belonging to the wide humanity beyond national barriers spread, also as a peace action in postwar period. A comprehensive set of policy guidelines and recommendations on tangible, natural and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) emerge, especially through international organisations such as UNESCO and ICOMOS. The 21st century ushers in a new era for CH by recognising its dynamic and evolving character. As Sonkoli and Vahtikari (2019) note, an ever-expanding notion of heritage is emerging, becoming a field of interest in different disciplinary, policy, and societal sectors. Alongside the identification, conservation and protection activities promoted by experts or public authorities, the idea of pluralisation of heritage values and community involvement in its selection, protection and exploitation arises.

Heritage studies currently investigate heritage as a future-making practice, exploring some emerging issues linked to the transformative nature of culture and CH. Researchers and heritage agencies constantly confront, for example, with the challenging concept of “universal value” still in use today in the CH institutionalisation procedures (Smith, 2006), assuming its extension in favour of community-led designation processes. Moreover, admitting the evolutionary character of heritage and its “social value” means accepting its precariousness, the possibility of its disappearance, transformation, and the betrayal of its authentic sense (Harrison, 2012). CH is alive, dynamic, and fragile in globalised and neoliberal societies, calling for public reflexivity and stronger alliances between local communities, institutions and experts in finding inclusive identification, protection and enhancement measures. Finally, considering CH as a tool for societal change and sustainable development implies developing strategies and methods to enhance cultural spillover in key sectors such as labour, health, environment, and technology, thereby making it an effective vehicle for cohesion, democracy, and social progress.

References

Council of Europe (2005). Framework convention on the value of cultural heritage for society, Council of Europe Treaty Series No. 199, Faro.

European Commission (2019). European framework for action on cultural heritage, Publications Office, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/949707

Harrison, R. (2012). Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: Late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6), 579–595. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2012.678371

Smith, L. (2006). Use of heritage. Routledge. 

Sonkoli, G., & Vahtikari, T. (2019). Innovation in cultural heritage. Research for an Integrated European Research Policy. European Commission.