Suchergebnisse

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the new European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discursive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and non-participation; and embodiment and affective experience of heritage. Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage, politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe. ; peerReviewed

The introduction to Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe theoretically grounds the book's various problematizations of heritage and identity struggles in Europe today, including the heritage policies of the EU and other intergovernmental organizations, struggles over ethnographic and historical exhibitions, activist practices, and dissonant memories. By discussing these struggles and their problematizations, the introduction connects the book to a wide range of ongoing debates across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, it discusses how convergences and divergences within and between the volume's chapters foster new insights regarding the concepts of dissonant heritage (transnational) memory, and Europe. The book thus builds on a wide array of theory from interdisciplinary fields, ranging from memory and heritage studies, social sciences, and postcolonial theory, while also adding new insights based on empirical research, specifically concerning the understanding and use of the concept of dissonance. ; peerReviewed

In this book, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Katja Mäkinen, Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas, and Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus scrutinize how people who participate in cultural initiatives funded and governed by the European Union understand the idea of Europe. The book focuses on three cultural initiatives: the European Capital of Culture, the European Heritage Label, and a European Citizen Campus project funded through the Creative Europe programme. These initiatives are examined through field studies conducted in 12 countries between 2010 and 2018. The authors describe their approach as 'ethnography of Europeanization' and conceptualize the attempts at Europeanization in the European Union's cultural policy as politics of belonging. ; peerReviewed

Turunen discusses how the "European significance" of the European Heritage Label (EHL) sites has been narrated through interconnections of European values and European integration. She argues that, in the context of the EHL, integration is intricately linked to the notion of spreading common values, which in turn is entangled with Eurocentrism. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the geography of coloniality: the underlying spatial structure that makes the coloniality of European cultural heritage and related hierarchies more visible. Ultimately, the chapter shows how the concept of coloniality enables us to analyse the ways Eurocentrism is also embedded in ideas about European cultural heritage beyond colonial heritage, examining the role trans-European initiatives like the EHL could have in the decolonization of European cultural heritage. ; peerReviewed

Kaasik-Krogerus scrutinizes the European Heritage Label (EHL) as an authorized heritage discourse (AHD) in the making. She analyses how the discourse is formed in a politics of mobility and stability between the local, national, and European scales resulting from the interplay of europeanization (of the national and local) and domestication (of the European). The chapter asks how this politics of mobility and stability is conducted to manage the scalar dissonance in one of the sites, the Great Guild Hall in Tallinn, Estonia. Kaasik-Krogerus argues that the politics conducted in the exhibitions works in two controversial ways: legitimizing mobility and stability as natural and simultaneously challenging these as problematic. The analysis illuminates the dissonance between the national-scale intents and their consequences on the European scale concerning power relations, multiscalarity, and future imaginaries. ; peerReviewed

Along with the European Union's (EU) increased interest in a common European culture and past, narration as a means to create and communicate about them has gained new momentum. By applying the Discourse-Mythological Approach, I explore how the EU narrates the story of the origins of EU Europe in two recent EU heritage/history initiatives. The analysis brought out three storylines in the mythmaking of EU Europe. While the first storyline emphasizes temporal continuity, shared cultural roots, and preservation and transmission of a common legacy, the second focuses on the idea of a break and a rebirth of a civic/political community. The third storyline highlighting founding figures and key heroes functions as a mediator between these two narratives. The founding myths seek to justify the political aims of the EU, that is, strengthening European unification and multilevel integration, and presenting these aims as choiceless and morally and ethically legitimated. ; peerReviewed

During past decades, the EU has responded to a variety of 'crises' by promoting a common cultural heritage to advance European identity and belonging. This article analyses identity politics conducted in the framework of the EU's flagship heritage action, the European Heritage Label. I borrow from 'banal nationalism' to scrutinise the usage of 'we' and 'us' in the promotional videos of the European Heritage Label sites as subject positions offered for identification in this heritage discourse. Analysis shows that the subject positions are constituted by an emphasis on the national level, preservation of the past for future generations and the key role of experts in the process of heritage. Although the heritage agents talk about Europe (representation) they do not identify with that as 'us'. By making the lack of 'banal Europeanness' in the videos visible the article shows the ambiguities of European identity politics. ; peerReviewed

This chapter investigates how peace is used in attempts to build a collective identity for the European Union in the context of the European Heritage Label (EHL), a central instrument in the EU's cultural heritage policy. The official EHL documents and the websites of the EHL sites are analysed using a conceptual approach that particularly focuses on the interconceptualizations between peace and Europe. The ways peace is discussed can be divided into four thematic categories: treaties, institutions, practices, and symbols related to peace. The chapter concludes that heritage related to peace is mainly discussed in a non-contradictory manner, with little space for dissonance. ; peerReviewed

In contrast to recent reinforcements of Europe's internal and external borders due to the refugee situation on the Mediterranean and the Covid-19 outbreak, talk of European borders has in the past decades focused on the freedom of mobility guaranteed by the Schengen treaty. In many senses, free intra-European mobility has become a recited truth in the EU discourse: a phrase that hides under its repetition the gap between its implied content and empirical realities of many of those who are affected by European borders' exclusive tendencies. Through the concept of borderscape, this article focuses on the role that cultural products – especially maps exhibited at heritage sites – have in reciting ideas of European borders. In this context, ideas of European heritage are approached as a bordering practice – as an active process of creating, sustaining and challenging cultural border imaginaries and the many in/exclusion they imply. Empirically the article is focused on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a recent heritage action of the European Union (EU). The article asks what is the relationship between national and European representations of space; how are Europe's external borders represented; and what kind of cultural power hierarchies can be identified behind these representations? ; peerReviewed

This article explores the politics of solidarity in the framework of constructing a common cultural heritage of the European Union. The politics of solidarity stems from the notion of solidarity embedded to European heritage. We use critical heritage studies as a theoretical approach that understands heritage as an inherently dissonant social construct, produced by various actors according to political, economic and social interests. The study analyses empirical data from the European Heritage Label (EHL), a flagship heritage action of the EU that communicates shared values and a sense of identification to European citizens. Our empirical data includes ethnographic observation as well as interviews with experts and visitors at two EHL sites, the Hambach Castle (Germany) and the European Solidarity Centre (Poland). The sites specifically mediate the notion of solidarity to the visitors as a bottom-up process that has a strong potential to produce societal change. Our analysis shows how the EHL conducts twofold politics of solidarity. First, by designating the label to this kind of site, solidarity is embedded into European heritage. Second, by heritagising solidarity, the EHL endeavours to evoke a sense of solidarity among contemporary Europeans. ; peerReviewed

The political and economic crises of the recent decades as well as the new changes brought on by globalization and digitalization have contributed to exacerbate social inequalities and injustice and revealed different social realities in Europe. The EU increasingly deals with social issues in its cultural and heritage policy. In this article, we explore the construction of this social dimension and advance the concept of 'social Europe' by exploring its cultural aspect based on our analysis of a recent EU heritage action, the European Heritage Label. In this action, the narrations of the European past and the attempts to foster common cultural heritage in Europe function as building blocks to create Europe as an intertwined cultural and social entity and to socialize a new generation of European citizens. We scrutinize the European Heritage Label and its notion of heritage from two perspectives. First, we analyse how the selection reports of these heritage sites construct a notion of social Europe. Second, we examine how visitors to these sites construct social Europe in their qualitative interviews. Key elements in this construction are narratives related to various values, mobility, and diversity. ; peerReviewed

Euroopan unioni (EU) on kamppaillut viime vuosikymmeninä useiden kriisien keskellä. Kansallismielisten puolueiden nousu jäsenmaissa on pakottanut myös EU:n reagoimaan ja etsimään keinoja, joilla tukea ylikansallisten politiikan ratkaisuihin voitaisiin vahvistaa. Euroopan komissio ja useat tutkimukset ovat tunnistaneet eurooppalaisen identiteetin rakentamisen yhdeksi keskeiseksi välineeksi EU:n legitimiteetin vahvistamiseksi. 2010-luvun aikana toteutetut kyselytutkimukset antavat ymmärtää, että suomalaiset kokevat itsensä ranskalaisia useammin eurooppalaisiksi huolimatta siitä, että Ranska on yksi unionin perustajamaista, kun taas Suomi liittyi EU:hun vasta vuonna 1995. Vahvasti kontekstisidonnaisen identiteettidiskurssin näkökulmasta tämä on kiinnostavaa ja ansaitsee tarkempaa tieteellistä tarkastelua. Eurooppalaista identiteettiä rakennetaan useissa eri konteksteissa. Sosiaalisesta mediasta on vähitellen muodostunut julkisille instituutioille keskeinen viestintäkanava suoraan kansalaisille, minkä vuoksi myös Euroopan komissio on ottanut eri sosiaalisen median alustat käyttöönsä tavoittaakseen kansalaisensa paremmin. Sosiaalinen media on kuitenkin aliedustettuna useissa eurooppalaista identiteettiä käsittelevissä tutkimuksissa, vaikka sen merkitys kansalaisten ja instituutioiden arjessa on yhä suurempi. Tämän tutkimus selvittää vertaillen, miten komissio rakentaa eurooppalaisen identiteetin diskurssia toisaalta suomalaiselle ja toisaalta ranskalaiselle yleisölle kohdistetuilla julkaisuillaan Facebookissa, Twitterissä ja Instagramissa. Tutkimuksen tieteenfilosofinen pohja on sosiaalisen konstruktivismin perinteessä ja menetelmänä on poliittinen, kriittinen diskurssianalyysi. Tutkimus keskittyy kielellisiin ja tarkemmin tekstisidonnaisiin keinoihin, joilla eurooppalaista identiteettiä rakennetaan. Eurooppalaista identiteettiä käsitellään sosiaalisena, kollektiivisena identiteettinä. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu Euroopan komission Ranskan ja Suomen edustojen omista julkaisuista Facebookissa, Twitterissä ja Instagramissa ajalla 1.1.-30.6.2018. Tutkimus osoittaa, että komissio rakentaa eurooppalaisen identiteetin diskurssia eri tavoin suomenkielisessä ja ranskankielisessä sosiaalisessa mediassa. Identiteettidiskurssi voidaan määritellä kuuden aladiskurssin ympärille, joita ovat eurooppalaisuus, inkluusio, arvot, symbolit, yhteiset kokemukset ja kielikuvat. Erot vertailluissa diskursseissa ovat sekä laadullisia että määrällisiä. Laadullisesti komissio korostaa suomenkielisissä julkaisuissaan erityisesti eurooppalaisia arvoja ja EU:n toiminnan vaikutuksia sekä merkitystä suomalaisten arjessa. Ranskankielisissä julkaisuissa nousevat puolestaan esiin ennen kaikkea inkluusio ja me-ryhmän rakentaminen sekä EU:n lippu eurooppalaisena symbolina. Erot heijastelevat kummankin jäsenmaan historiaa eurooppalaisessa integraatiossa ja sitä, mitä tekijöitä jäsenmaat ovat korostaneet integraationsa eri vaiheissa. Määrällisesti aktiivisemmin eurooppalaisen identiteetin diskurssia rakentaa Euroopan komissio Ranskassa. Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset ovat siis osin ristiriidassa kyselytutkimusten tuottamien havaintojen kanssa. Tutkimus antaa pohjan eurooppalaisen identiteetin lisätutkimukselle sosiaalisessa mediassa ja kansallisissa vertailukonteksteissa.