Heritage Regimes and the State

What happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratified by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratified and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifies itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage.What happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratified by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratified and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifies itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage

Heritage Regimes and the State

What happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratified by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratified and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifies itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage

Praktiken des Kulturerbens im deutsch-tschechischen Erzgebirge

Softcover, 17x24Wie entsteht eine Kulturlandschaft? Und wie ist dieser Prozess mit der Inwertsetzung von Objekten, Stätten und Räumen als Kulturerbe verbunden? Die ethnografische Studie zeichnet am Beispiel des deutsch-tschechischen Erzgebirges die Beziehungen zwischen Praktiken des Kulturerbens und der Herstellung von Raumkonstruktionen nach. Anknüpfend an kulturwissenschaftliche Kulturerbe- und Policyforschung stehen nationale und internationale Kulturerbe-Governancen – insbesondere das UNESCO-Welterbeprogramm – im Fokus. Wie ist deren Verhältnis zu lokalen Erinnerungsdiskursen und -praktiken und wie zur Förderung regionaler (Tourismus-)Wirtschaft? Und welche Rolle spielen dabei EU-Policies zur europäischen Integration? Die deutsch-tschechische Erzgebirgsregion ist von der Zwangsmigration und Neuansiedlung nach 1945 bis heute geprägt. Die Monographie zeigt auf, wie vor dem Hintergrund dieser komplexen Geschichte, kollektive Eigentumsansprüche an Kultur formuliert und ein gemeinsames, grenzübergreifendes Erbe ausgehandelt werden.How does a cultural landscape come into being? And how is this process connected to the valorization of objects, sites and spaces as cultural heritage? Based on the example of the Czech-German Ore Mountains the ethnographic study investigates the relationship between practices of inheriting culture and the producton of space. With reference to anthropological heritage and policy studies, the research focuses on national and international heritage governances, particularly those of the UNESCO world heritage prorgram. How are they related to local memory discourses and practices? How do they assist in the promotion of regional tourism and other economic endeavors? What role do EU-policies on European integration play? The Czech-German Ore Mountains region is marked by post-war forced migration and resettlement. Against the background of this complex history, the study shows how collective claims on cultural property are formulated and how a shared, transboundary heritage is negotiated

Creating and Dealing with Cultural Heritage in the Erzgebirge Region – A Field Report

In summer 2009 I carried out initial field research for my dissertation project in the Erzgebirge, a mountain range divided by the Czech-German border – which separates it into a Saxon and Bohemian side – and which is famous for handmade wood arts. Initially my research concerned the question if, and if so how, property claims on wood arts are negotiated in international, national, and local contexts. The ongoing preparation for Montanregion Erzgebirge (the Erzgebirge Mining Region) to be nominated as a UNESCO Cultural Landscape widened my interest. Using this example of World Heritage in the making I enquire who the initiators are, what possible resistance there is, how the selection processes for entry onto the preliminary list of artefacts unfolds, and how the selected elements are interpreted

The Stories Plants Tell: An Introduction to Vegetal Narrative Cultures

Our introduction aims to contest narrative as an anthropocentric proper and delineates current theories, methods, and challenges of conceiving plants as both storytellers and storied matter. Our issue fits into the larger frame of a recent “vegetal turn” within the humanities that has long been used to find plants marginal, mute, or symbolic supplements to human stories. The introduction, therefore, focuses on forms of vegetal creativity and narrativity. It explores vegetal narrative cultures emerging when (1) plants co-author and shape narrative practices, (2) plant stories partake in the creation of multispecies societies, and (3) plant articulations are embedded in narrative contexts

“Stories are seeds. We need to learn how to sow other stories about plants.”

In this interview, Natasha Myers discusses her understanding of plants and the relational stories they tell. As a scholar, activist, and artist based in Toronto, Canada, Myers proposes ways to detune Western norms and forms of sense-making, to expand our sensorium, and participate with plants in the stories they tell. Calling out the colonial violence, racial injustice, and neo-Darwinism that are lurking within the stories people still tell about plants, Myers invites us to explore ways of sensing plants that can cultivate human-plant kinship, and open us up to an experience of the creativity of plant life

Schlüsselbegriffe der Public History

Der Band stellt Schlüsselbegriffe der Public History vor und erschließt diese über die wichtigsten Themenfelder und zentrale Forschungsperspektiven. Er richtet sich an Studierende, Lehrende und Praktiker:innen, die sich mit Geschichte in der Öffentlichkeit befassen und bietet Zugänge zur theoretischen Fundierung der Public History als Teil der historischen Kulturwissenschaften an