European cultural heritage in the making: politics, affects, and agency (research costs/2) (EUCHE)

Main funder

Funder's project number: 312494

Funds granted by main funder (€)

Funding program

Project timetable

Project start date: 01/09/2017

Project end date: 31/12/2019

Summary

The problematic of transnational cultural heritage has recently been activated in a new way in Europe as the idea of heritage has been utilized for political purposes in the EU policy. Since the turn of the century, the EC has launched or jointly administered several initiatives which focus on fostering the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The European Heritage Label (EHL) is the most recent EU cultural initiative in this domain. Heritage is a cultural and political concept which is easily instrumentalized for the use of diverse territorial and communal identity projects. Due to its affective nature, the politics, discourses, and practices of heritage are often intertwined with contentions over its symbolical and factual ownership, meanings, and uses. How is the idea of a common and shared European cultural heritage created in the EU and Europe today? What kinds of politics are included in its creation? What kinds of agencies are intertwined to the creation at different territorial levels and what kinds of social dynamics and hierarchies are formed between the agencies? How is the affective nature of heritage being used in the production and meaning-making of common European cultural heritage? How are the politics, agencies and affects over heritage intertwined? These are the core questions to which the research project aims to answer. The EHL functions as an empirical frame in the investigation of these questions. The research data includes the EU policy documents; applications and promotional material of the EHL sites; and interviews with the authorities in charge of the EHL initiative at EU, national and local levels, the heritage agents working in the case EHL sites, and visitors to the sites. The data is analysed with qualitative methods; concept analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. The project participates in broader critical discussion on the current identity and integration politics and policies in the EU and Europe by extending the discussion with an analysis of heritage politics. The main findings and the critical discussion of the project are likely to be of great interest not only among scholars in the fields of heritage studies, cultural policy studies, cultural studies, European Studies, ethnology, history, and sociology, but also among politicians, authorities, and heritage agents on local, regional, national, and EU levels.

Principal Investigator

Primary responsible unit

Follow-up groups

Profiling area: School of Wellbeing (University of Jyväskylä JYU) JYU.Well