Discourses of Heritagization in East-Central Europe

Eitler, Ágnes and Ament-Kovács, Bence (2024) Discourses of Heritagization in East-Central Europe. ACTA ETHNOGRAPHICA HUNGARICA, 68 (2). pp. 273-285. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

The making of heritage is a complex contemporary process that permeates society from the normative contexts of the global as well as national level to local communities. It enters extremely diverse sites, since it is part of both rural and urban life-worlds, and it is present in the institutional space of museums as well. Cultural elements that have been detached from their former contexts and made into heritage are no less diverse. The symbolic valorization of different historical periods depends on the regional and local contexts of heritage-making. The prestige (acceptance or rejection) and meanings of the legacy of certain periods, relationship to tradition, as well as the ways in which ‘authenticity’ is interpreted are products of a constant re-defining process steered by various social actors, such as members of local communities, cultural brokers, and experts. These positions often represent intertwining roles (researcher, expert, mediator, active or passive local actors) that are difficult to distinguish from one another in the various situations in which heritage-making can be researched empirically.

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