Tous Ce Qui Concerne Le Patrimoine

1. We can account for power configurations as by-products of specific heritage assemblages and configurations. Conceived this way, it ceases to be a transcendent entity to become an ambiguous but earthly process whose conditions of emergence can be traced and challenged.
2. Heritage is granted an ontological status and is not only considered as an epistemological construct, thus being co-constitutive of reality and inherently political: it builds subjectivities, breaks apart, or reinforces specific states of things. It is slippery and diffuse, and can hardly be accounted for through ideological critique as it is neither bad or good, progressive or reactionary. This will depend on the affects and connections it promotes, the energies it releases or restrains, and the subjectivities and ways of life it constructs.
3. Heritage is as much a physical construct as it is a social or political one – does not intangible heritage comprise bodies? –. To understand heritage as meaning and mere political representation, or contrarily as a thing ruled by ‘natural’ laws of market value, is problematic. With Latour, we can talk about construction, but not only about ‘social construction’ (Latour 2005c). This mechanism will enable us “to produce problematized matters of concern: things rather than objects” (Zaera-Polo 2008: 76).
4. The dichotomy between explanation and interpretation vanishes. Because heritage presents open-ended interpretations and cannot be framed within a closed set of causal relations and laws, we can only provide partial explanations and understandings (Law 2004a). Therefore, we should avoid the reductionist getaway that bestows agency to entities which irradiate meaning and act as primary causes, such as the State (Breglia 2006; Herzfeld 2010), the State and the elites (García Canclini 1999), the professionals and experts (Smith 2006) or Capital (Harvey 2001)) The existence of certain powerful agencies in heritage – which I do not deny – cannot prevent us from looking at processes of social mimicry and contagion, struggles –material and symbolic – around objects, and to acknowledge the ’diffuse’ character of heritage that renders it so slippery.
5. Assemblages are always involved in different lower and higher level assemblages. Therefore, we should abandon the infeasible hard-line scientific task of ‘individuating heritage data’ or striving to define ‘what is heritage’. We must face instability and assume that heritage is diffuse, which does not undermine its ontological status  whatsoever. Furthermore, assemblages are boundless and open-ended. Consequently, without relinquishing thorough methodological depth, we must acknowledge that our analyses are fundamentally incomplete. Referring to the issue of analysis, Geertz argues that “the more deeply it goes the less complete it is  There are a number of ways of escaping this—turning culture into folklore and collecting it, turning it into traits and counting it, turning it into institutions and classifying it, turning it into structures and toying with it. But they are escapes” (Geertz 1973a: 29).
6. Heritage and spatial planners cannot take heritage value for granted and must be sensitive to the particularities of each context, thus jettisoning universal concepts and empty signifiers such as community or sustainability (Gunder 2006). There are no heritage resources, but rather processes of valorization to be modulated according to planning criteria

This paper explores the ways in which a theorization of heritage as a commons complicates the relation of heritage and identity. The paper analyzes how cultural heritage management and theorizations connect with the “old” vernacular commons in rural Europe, communist ideologies, Hardin’s and Ostrom’s theories, and finally with Hardt and Negri’s ideas. Can heritage managers and scholars work as mediators between the global flows of value and local communities, promoting redistributive policies and identity building capacities in the face of overarching commodification processes? How can the notion of a “shared” heritage be mobilized by local communities to implement politics of redistribution and rethinking of ownership against an alienated “world heritage” that frames itself as a globally “shared” common heritage of humanity? What are the consequences of treating heritage as a commons for identity politics?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical genealogy and main uses of heritage in actually existing communist countries. This is performed by carrying out a critical review of Èleazar Aleksandrovič Baller’s Communism and Cultural Heritage, (1984, Progress, Moscow). The analysis of Baller’s work reveals that the logics of heritage in communist countries differed in various ways from capitalist countries, mainly because of the almost total state control over the heritage apparatus and the subordination of heritage policies to Marxist–Leninist ideology. Heritage was fundamental in dealing with the problem of change and continuity with the traditions, narratives and identities of previous society, and in the process of transforming citizens into ‘new men’ through the cultural revolution and the inculcation of ideology through museums and monuments.

The transition towards a cognitive and post-industrial economy has led to the emergence of new strategies of capture of the immanent productive capacities of the social forces. Heritage entities are subject to, and also participate in, processes by which common creativity and knowledge are being harnessed by novel forms of rent and control. The objective of this paper was to show that conceiving heritage as a common situated in specific contexts rather than as a universal essence can open up novel epistemological spheres of communication between different knowledge practices. Also, it can help bridge some ontological gaps among the various stakeholders in the arena of heritage, such as academics, managers, architects, local communities and market forces. This entails considering heritage as an emergent material and immaterial construction process involving many different agents. Currently, these processes tend towards the privatization of common values and the shattering of local communities. Normally, this situation entails a fundamental alienation between objects and subjects, and the reification of heritage. This paper suggests that considering heritage as a common could provide a different perspective to tackle this crucial problem. Accordingly, scholars should not only be bound to a critical discursive stance, but should also commit to ‘ontological politics’ that would situate them as mediators between the global hierarchies of value generated by heritage and the common productive potential of local communities.

El patrimonio es hoy una palabra en boca de todos. Ha sido enarbolado por naciones e instituciones, estudiado por intelectuales y científicos, criticado por su capacidad de generar conflictividad en relación con la identidad y la memoria, y mercantilizado globalmente a partir de criterios semejantes, desde Tailandia hasta Bolivia. Pero estas investigaciones han partido mayoritariamente del supuesto de que el patrimonio es algo dado, incluso bueno y valioso por sí mismo, y que ha existido siempre. Por ello, el concepto de patrimonio no ha sido cuestionado como categoría, es decir, como una forma de relación propia de sociedades fetichistas y, por tanto, históricamente determinada y con unas raíces histórico-culturales intrínsecamente conectadas al surgimiento y expansión del capitalismo y de la epistemología de la Ilustración, moderna y occidental. Este libro propone una crítica a la categoría de patrimonio a partir de una etnografía en la comarca de Maragatería, España. La etnografía analiza empíricamente las transformaciones y procesos que llevan, o no, al patrimonio a pasar a existir entre los habitantes maragatos. El libro también deconstruye el mito del pueblo maragato como maldito y marginal, mito que atrajo ayer y hoy la atención de tantos intelectuales y científicos, mostrando la relación intrínseca entre la construcción del Estado-nación español, la generación de identidades diferenciales subalternas, el desarrollo capitalista, y el surgimiento y la mercantilización del patrimonio cultural.

To solve many well known problems, affecting Italian cultural heritage over our history, we now have the opportunity to take example and useful suggestions from the best international practices, as this is happening in many other topics and sectors of the public administration. For that, the best thing to do is to apply correctly the UNESCO Conventions (especially Paris 1972 and, recently, Hague 1999 II Protocol) in the World Hetitage sites, and also to put them into effect in all other national appropriate heritage sites. First of all, we have to enforce the rules concerning the safeguard and protection of cultural property, in different events of risk situations. By this way, Italy can also start a more effective and strategic enhancement of the very large professional skills of cultural NGOs, voluntary associations and non profit institutions. It's also intersting to observe, nevertheless, that in this way we can also improve the most respectful application of the "Cultural Property Code" and, finally, of our "Cultural Constitution"

Le premier article "De l'importance de la fabrication" rappellle que les villes sont mesurées suivant des critères internationaux afin de définir leur degré d'attrait pour les investisseurs. L'auteurs soulève l'importance du patrimoine historique dans ce cadre susceptible de définir une image de marque. Comment définit-t-on le patrimoine et pourquoi lui confère-t-on tantôt la qualité d'objet sacré, tantôt d'objet économique durable.
"La forteresse de Luxembourg en 1687, un patrimoine reconnu?" présente les réflexions faites au cours du démantèlement à propos de la démolition, respectivement de la conservation de l'ancien patrimoine militiaire.