Editorial: initiating cultural heritage research to increase Europe's competitiveness (original) (raw)

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...

CfP: The Cultural Heritage of Europe @ 2018 Re-assessing a Concept – Re-defining its Challenges

Today's globalized concept of cultural heritage is often understood as a product of European modernity with its 19 th-century emergence of territorially fixed nation-states and collective identity constructions. Within the theoretical overlap of the disciplines of history (of art), archaeology and architecture cultural properties and built monuments were identified and embedded into gradually institutionalized protection systems. In the colonial context up to the mid-20 th century this specific conception of cultural heritage was transferred to non-European contexts, internationalized in the following decades after the WWII and taken as universal. Postcolonial, postmodern and ethnically pluralistic viewpoints did rightly question the supposed prerogative of a European Leitkultur. Only rather recently did critical heritage studies engage with the conflicting implications of progressively globalized standards of cultural heritage being applied in very local, non-European and so-called 'traditional' contexts. However, in order to bridge what academia often tends to essentialize as a 'Western' and 'non-Western' divide of opposing heritage conceptions, a more balanced viewpoint is also needed in order to update the conceptual foundations of what 'cultural heritage of/in Europe' means today. The European Cultural Heritage Year 2018 – a campaign with unquestioned assumptions? Right at the peak of an identity crisis of Europe with financial fiascos of whole nation states, military confrontations and refortified state borders at its continental peripheries with inflows of refugees from the Near East and the Global South did the European Council and Parliament representatives reach a provisional agreement to establish a European Year of Cultural Heritage in 2018. With affirmative slogans such as " We Europeans " and " our common European heritage " , the campaign intends to " raise awareness of European history and values, and strengthen a sense of European identity " (Press release of the European Council, 9 February 2017). However, with its unquestioned core assumption of the validity of Europe's territorial status with simply interconnected borderlines of its affiliated member states and of a given collective 'we'-identity within the European Union, this cultural-political campaign risks to miss the unique chance of a critical re-assessment of how a 'European' dimension of cultural heritage can be conceptualized in today's globalized and interconnected reality. The " cultural heritage of Europe " @ 2018: towards a global and transcultural approach The global and transcultural turn in the disciplines of art and architectural history and cultural heritage studies helps to question the supposed fixity of territorial, aesthetic and artistic entity

Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe

Jagodzińska, Katarzyna et al. Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe. Krakow: International Cultural Centre on behalf CHCFE Consortium. 2015. Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe was an international research project whose aim was to collect and critically analyse quantitative and qualitative data that verify the thesis on the positive impact of cultural heritage on economic and social spheres, as well as on culture and natural environment. Project authors assume that cultural heritage should be regarded in terms of development resources, rather than as a sphere requiring financial investment and protective measures. It seems that it is commonly accepted that cultural heritage plays a major role in all spheres of life and on all levels – local, regional, national, and European. However, very often, there are no “proofs” or arguments based on the evaluation of actual projects that could substantiate these claims. Research teams working for the Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe consortium undertook the task of identifying existing research projects on the impact of heritage realised in particular member states of the European Union and this way verify the initial thesis on an important role of heritage for the socio-economic development of Europe.

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