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2018
The European Heritage Label (EHL) is the EU's flagship heritage action. It focuses on promoting the European significance of the cultural heritage and a sense of belonging among the European citizenry. The nature of the action and its proclaimed aims in identity politics necessitate wide public engagement, openness, and transparency. Compared to the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) action and the UNESCO Heritage Lists, the EHL application process has poor transparency, as the applications of the labeled sites are not made public or accessible to other heritage professionals, managers, policymakers, researchers, or public audiences. To increase the transparency of the EU heritage policy in the EHL action and to enhance the benefits this action has for various actors, we recommend changing its policy by making successful applications fully or partly public. This policy brief has been produced as part of the EUROHERIT project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant no.
Routledge, 2020
Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discur-sive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and non-participation; and embodiment and affective experience of heritage. Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage , politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe.
Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union
2020
Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic fi eld research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discursive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and nonparticipation; and embodiment and aff ective experience of heritage. Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage, politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe.
The European Heritage Label: The Construction of European Identity
2023
The ratification of the Maastricht Treaty marked the beginning of an era in which the European integration process became a central part of EU cultural policy. The construction of a European identity is widely recognised as an integral part of the cultural dimension of this European integration process. Despite its multidisciplinary relevance and importance for the present and future of the European community, European identity still needs to be clarified. In economic, financial, and humanitarian crises, cohesion within the European Union (EU) takes on new significance. Creating a solid bond between member states based on shared culture and heritage becomes ever more critical. In this relevance for a coherent European identity to strengthen the European community, I see the relevance in asking how EU policymakers aim to construct this European identity within EU cultural initiatives. By conducting an analysis of the European Heritage Label (EHL) policy and further identifying the discursive approach chosen, this paper aims to evaluate the approach's efficiency critically.
Europeana, EDM, and the Europeanisation of Cultural Heritage Institutions
Digital Culture & Society, 2021
Over the past two decades, the European Commission has mobilised cultural heritage to bolster a European identity. One of the main flagship initiatives promoted to this end has been Europeana, the most extensive digital cultural project financed by the EU. At the core of the project stands europeana.eu, a digital cultural portal aggregating metadata provided by national and local heritage institutions. Central in our analysis is the Europeana Data Model (EDM). Using standardised thesauri and vocabularies, EDM offers the possibility to create a semantic contextualisation for objects, allowing semantic operations on the metadata and their enrichment with Linked Open Data on the web. Due to its overarching nature, EDM cannot deliver the granularity that cultural heritage institutions need when documenting their resources. Nonetheless, heritage institutions accept to sacrifice accuracy to have their information represented in a Europewide collection. We study how this digital heritage infrastructure was designed to enact a sense of Europeanness amongst national and local institutions. Policy documents, ethnographic research and a systematic survey amongst the European heritage institutions enabled us to trace how a standardised European metadata structure plays a role in governing local and national heritage institutions. The EDM might enable heritage stakeholders to benefit from Europeana’s online exposure while enacting a European mindset. Ultimately, this study of the metadata model enriches the debate on the EU’s cultural heritage politics, which has not fully explored the role of the digital. At the same time, it also taps into debates about infrastructure and digital governmentality.
Intangible Cultural Heritage, Europe, and the EU: Dangerous Liaisons?
Cultural Heritage in the European Union. A Critical Inquiry into Law and Policy Series: Studies in Intercultural Human Rights, Volume: 9; Editors: Andrzej Jakubowski, Kristin Hausler and Francesca Fiorentini, 2019
This chapter gives an interdisciplinary analysis of institutional, political, and legal framework adopted in the field of implementation of the concept of intangible cultural heritage (as defined by unesco) in Europe as a region, on the level of the member states of the European Union, as well as on the level of the EU institutions. It is argued that the EU policy towards intangible cultural heritage is a ‘work in progress’, highly influenced by the still present Authorized Heritage Discourse as defined by Laurajane Smith (2016) and the ‘World Heritage’ paradigm. The great potential of bringing intangible cultural heritage on the EU level for, e.g., enhancing community participation in cultural heritage safeguarding or developing creative and inclusive sustainable cultural heritage policies has not been addressed adequately yet. On the other hand, Europe as a region proved to be highly successful in operationalizing the 2003 unesco Convention, e.g. as regards the presence on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This chapter seeks to find the reasons for this state of the art, as well as to identify challenges and inherent risks stemming from the possible greater visibility of intangible cultural heritage in Europe and in the EU as an organization.
Towards a Shared Understanding of the Concept of Heritage in the European Context
Heritage, 2019
The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of commonalities and differences in the concept of cultural heritage in Europe. This was achieved through a comprehensive academic and non-academic literature review focused on different definitions and conceptualisations related to cultural heritage internationally and in the European context. This is complemented with a comparative study in three European countries. This paper frames cultural heritage using the foundation set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It further discusses the European actors involved in defining heritage today. Finally, it focuses on three European countries and verifies that they share an understanding of cultural heritage including classifications, categorisation and heritage values. Findings from the overall study show how the definition of cultural heritage across Europe is reasonably homogeneous, and this is confirmed by the analysis of the thre...
Cultural Heritage in the Frame of European Funding Programmes: Challenges and Opportunities
2017
Tangible and intangible CH is constituted by a multifaceted set of expressions, encompassing not only acknowledged creative forms such as works of art and monuments, but also other cultural manifestations such as folk songs, narratives of the oral tradition or manmade landscapes. CH plays a crucial role at the European level, representing an invaluable asset for all its citizens, and at the same time being a potential source on which to invest both from a social and economic perspective. The commitment towards its creative and cultural richness is grounded in the constitutional basis of Europe, the Treaty of Lisbon, stating that “[the Union] shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced” and