Suchergebnisse

Dimensions of Heritage and Memory is a landmark contribution on the politics of the past in Europe today. The book explores the meanings of heritage in a time of crisis, when the past permeates social and political divisions, identity contests and official projects to forge a European community.

Providing an overview of the literature and an analysis of the assumptions, values and philosophies embedded within European-level policy, the book explores different dimensions of heritage and memory, from official sites, museums and policy, to party politics, historical re-enactments and the everyday ways in which people use the past to make sense of who they are. The volume explores how different understandings of and attachments to the European past produce different 'Europes' in the present, accounting for today's tense social and political relations. The book also explores formative histories for European identities that are neglected or hidden because of political circumstances and non-official heritage. Contributors consider the meanings of interlocking crises, such as economic fallout, xenophobia and the fragmentation of the EU, for new understandings of Europe's past in the present.

Dimensions of Heritage and Memory will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of heritage and memory studies, museum studies, history, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology and politics. The book will also be interesting to practitioners and cultural heritage policy-makers.

This book is a reflection on the politics of heritage in Europe at the present time,
in a moment of pluralised conceptions of the political, social and demographic
organisation proper to Europe. It is not a book that seeks to survey, define or
characterise an enduring 'European heritage' as an entity, but rather to explore
what heritage does – how it is understood, instrumentalised and what it enables
– within what we will argue is a 'critical' moment for both identities and geopolitics
in Europe.

This chapter differs from others in this monograph in its focus on two political
organisations, the EU and the COE, and their top-down
efforts to engage with
issues of heritage and identity. These organisations represent the two most
visible post-1945
political efforts to transform Europe as a region, by promoting
further integration; both are driven by a fluid collective memory of the impact
made by world wars, genocide, economic deprivation and other forms of societal
disruption. By their very nature, both organisations have sought to engage with
the construction and reconstruction of history and identity, both to pursue a
vision of a common Europe and to build a sense of purpose and value in their
organisational efforts to build integration (and therefore justify their existence).
They have selected particular policy instruments, which Hood (1983) defines as
the tools by which actors implement their governance strategies. The core
research question is: how do these two institutions seek to intervene and make
people engage with memories, histories and identities by creating cultural heritage
institutions and instruments?

As noted by Pierre Nora (1989, p. 17), 'no-one
knows what the past will be
made of next'. While this is indeed so, it is also the case that the past will surely
be 'made' somehow. In this chapter, we take a look at those makings and the
ubiquitous desire to recreate what once was that arguably undergirds almost any
heritage practice.

This final chapter
takes up these questions, mining some of our ethnographies for support. One of
these is the basis for a short diversion to a Turkish coffeehouse in what used to
be the edge of West Berlin. This is a marginal story that turns out to be central,
allowing us to suggest that among the multiple Europes circulating and bickering in the air around us, there are still some others yet to be brought into sight. After
this, we close the book with some practical comments about what, in this time of
perceived crisis, should be done to re-orient ideas of the European past at the level of heritage practice.

This chapter is a set of accounts of the film Who is Europe? It is a conversation
between the filmmaker and the editors of this book, some of whom were directly
involved in the filmmaking too. It is a good idea to watch the film before reading
on. It is available at https://vimeo.com/303706985.