Cultural heritage: Negotiations, policy & practice
Cultural heritage represents a manifest and important field of interaction between past and present. Successful policies and practises of heritage management require genuine knowledge and understanding of how and why these values have been constituted, and of how and why they are continuously negotiated and redefined along with other changes in contemporary society. This on-going process is shaped by impacts from a variety of value systems, economic, social and cultural and from domestic political directives as well as from international conventions, treaties and directives.
The first set of problems to be analysed in the project, are the relationship between recognised value assessments and local practise, with prime objectives to study what happens when cultural historic assets are being reinterpreted and turned into cultural heritage and what happens when recognised national value assessments are being turned into local policy.
The second set of problems relate to processes of exclusion and inclusion of cultural heritage related to a selection of minorities and subgroups. Prime objectives are to explore some of the processes of exclusion and inclusion of cultural heritage which take place related to certain minorities and subgroups and to investigate if and how cultural heritage is used as an instrument with contested meanings.
The third set of problems centre around the relationship between international conventions, national and regional strategies and local practice, with prime objective to analyse what consequences the implementation of regulatory framework and conventions can have for the local, regional and national cultural heritage management, and with the role UNESCO`s World heritage convention has had for place development, branding and identification in focus.
The project will be organised in 3 WPs, where all participating researchers are expected to submit at least two-three scientific
articles and to present at least one international paper.
