Cultural heritage and the quest for new territories: toward what developments? - Nîmes

[i]4th Cultural Geography, Anthropology and Cultural Studies’ International Conference in Languedoc-Roussillon (South of France)[/i] February 25-27, 2010, University of Nîmes (France) [b]Deadline for proposals: May 15, 2009[/b] Proposals (between 2000 and 4000 signs, 1 to 2 pages) must be sent in Times New Roman 12, 1.5 line spacing, under Word. They shall feature 5 key words, as well as the first and last name, field, status, affiliation, and electronic address of the author. The file will be entitled as follows: LASTNAME.firstname.doc, and exclusively sent to: [url=mailto:christiane.lagarde@univ-montp3.fr]christiane.lagarde@univ-montp3.fr[/url] The papers can be given either in French or in English. The concept of cultural heritage triggers now multiple expectations as regards the development of territories: wishes to valorize the heritage, but also to open up the notion of territory to new, human, social, and political issues, to new strategies of protest, of questioning the market economy, and our relationship to the environment. The diversity taken by the notion leads us to explore its increasing ambiguity, precisely when the very notion of development is challenged by issues of sustainability and trans-disciplinarity. Such evolutions lead to new perspectives, new ways of questioning the multifaceted dynamics that organize the concept of heritage, of comparing its international uses, of studying from a practical angle the claims to cultural heritage that have been made at the level of different territories. Research on cultural heritage has recently developed, while the concept was applied to increasingly varied realities. This led to a broadening of the definitions of the concept, the most pragmatic advocating the idea that “cultural heritage is what a given community of social actors defines as such”. In France, however, the current structure of academia has generally led to a mono-disciplinary approach, despite attempts to bring together different fields and perspectives. From history (Nora, Choay, Poulot), to sociology (Micoud, Lamy), anthropology (Fabre, Bromberger, Rautenberg) to sociolinguistics (Blanchet) or semiology (Davallon), geography (Di Méo, Gravari-Barbas, Veschambre) to economy (Greffe), each discipline has contributed to the understanding of the concept according to its own frame of reference. Cultural heritage has consequently mostly been confined to conceptual frames that enabled to characterize it according to concepts pertaining to specific pre-exiting fields. Thus, for historians, heritage had to do with issues of memory and manipulation of the past, for sociologists, with performances by actors, for anthropologists, with collective identity construction or with cultural transmission processes, for semiologists, with the production of meaning, for sociolinguists, with social or linguistic means of valorization, for geographers, with the organization and the uses of space or with territorial planning, and for economists, with a source of profits and employment. From more recent, trans-disciplinary perspectives, post-modern approaches have contributed, within the various disciplines, to the development, on a theoretical basis that borrowed largely from semiology, of a reflection that lead to establishing connections between the implementation of cultural heritage processes, a virtual conception of time, and the need to locate oneself in reference to an everlasting present. Such hyperbolic expansion of the field of cultural heritage makes it all he more necessary to launch a reflection that associates the theoretical approach of academic disciplines and the pragmatic lean of professional and decision makers. Cultural heritage is what one makes of it, and as such, it is increasingly becoming a sort of intellectual pretext for articulating from a heuristic perspective the founding concepts of the various disciplines involved in its study. It has become urgent to reverse the process and build a new approach to heritage that would allow to assess how the concept actually performs, on the field, and why it has become so successful among the various social actors, despite the criticisms it has drawn. Why, how, and with which tools do the various actors claim the notion of heritage and apply it to issues of development? How is what we commonly call, acknowledge, and claim as cultural heritage made to serve development strategies and interests? To answer these questions, one must first question the concept of cultural heritage, which has become a buzz word of public policies: underline its ambiguities, understand its success and failures, the conditions and the moments it emerged in the fields of public policies and social sciences, assess its use in social practices. The central issue of the conference will be the potential evolution and development of the concept of cultural heritage; to what extent does it create new social and political debates throughout the world, how does it crystallize a thirst for change, human, economic or environmental change? Why is the concept of heritage still connected to cultural, economic, and territorial references, in spite of the risks of co-optation and standardization, of reification of the past and nostalgia? Consequently, this conference aims at studying the concept of heritage with tools elaborated by geography, anthropology, cultural studies, and a few more disciplines, privileging a pragmatic definition of heritage as made up of the various practices and representations of a given community. From this perspective, heritage should no longer be connected to the pre-existing theoretical and conceptual demands of academic disciplines. The goal is to show to what extent they can bring a better understanding of reality and of current social and cultural evolutions. The interdisciplinary dimension of the conference will enable to define perspectives that bypass strict boundaries and suggest common grounds. Moreover, an important aspect of the conference will be to focus on case studies concerning different countries. Comparative studies may deal with the on-going debates in various countries dealing with the ways to valorize cultural heritage, as well as the terminological ambiguities linked to the terms used in Europe and beyond to describe the concept (patrimoine, beni culturale, Erbe, culturarv, politistikē klēronomia, dziedzictwo kulturowe, örökség, nasledstvo, etc.). The conference will suggest thematic convergences, even perhaps several papers around a single object considered as cultural heritage by different cultural or social groups (music, festivals, celebrations, rituals, physical practices, oral expressions, crafts and skills, architecture, food ways, material culture...) Papers are expected from academics as well as professionals of cultural heritage; they should explore issues of relation between cultural heritage, and the quest for new territories, and new modes of development. The purpose is to better understand how the hidden meaning of heritage coincides with the emergence of new social spaces, and meets and new contemporary, collective demands in terms of social welfare and social peace. Similarly, it will be necessary to deal with issues of cultural heritage and life management, in order to distinguish the material and immaterial aspects of heritage. As well, proposals focusing on the overlapping/combination of the concept of sustainable development with that of cultural heritage will be welcome. How does one shift from preservation and development to sustainability? Proposals should explore one of the four main categories listed below: 1. Cultural heritage and the economy: what are the specific indicators that reveal the extent to which the concept cultural heritage accommodates new paradigms? 2. Cultural heritage and territories: to what extent do references to heritage contribute to the “marketing of place” and the building of new attractive sites in different parts of the world? What is process along which “nomadic heritage” and imaginary references to homeland cultures take shape among migrant populations? 3. Cultural heritage and identity: to what extent does heritage contribute to the formation of collective territorial identities? Does the development of heritage policies enhance risk of co-optation and globalization or is it a tool for the defense of cultural diversity? To what extent does the current predominance of heritage contribute to a new definition of mind frames and the experience of place? What are the links between heritage, the construction of time references, and everyday experience? 4. Cultural heritage and practices: how does the concept of heritage connect with the perspectives defined by experts and social actors involved in various artistic and cultural performances? What are the relations between constructing images and virtual worlds, reality, and cultural heritage? Is there a growing abstraction of heritage? Can everything be turned into heritage? Has heritage become the double of society? Visit the official site: http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/mte/