Conflicts and Reconciliation in the Postmillennial Heritage-Policy Discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union

Abstract

Europe is currently facing challenges that affect the contestation of the meaning of heritage. These challenges for example include: different forms of extremism in Europe, such as radical right and Islamist movements; Eurosceptic attitudes combined with new nationalist agendas; ethnic and religious confrontations; exclusion of minority, immigrant, and refugee groups; and various groups' sense that they do not belong to European societies. These challenges manifest in national, regional, and local discourses on heritage, and in their complex and dissonant relationship to the past, as the chapters by Rob van Laarse and Iris van Huis

World Heritage sites on Wikipedia: Cultural heritage activism in a context of constrained agency

“…As a context of heritage production, a resource of information on heritage, and itself an artifact and archive of contemporary digital heritage, Wikipedia is remarkable and holds substantial research potential. While the NPOV is a central policy for Wikipedia articles, representations and definitions of cultural heritage are never neutral in any discourse because they always come from some perspective (Lähdesmäki, 2019). Given the tremendous popularity and visibility of Wikipedia, it is important that future work on digital heritage in this context continues to critically examine what is absent from, and uncontested in, Wikipedia, and who benefits and suffers from these absences.…”

‘Being’, ‘Becoming’ and ‘Challenging’ European: Subject Positions in the European Heritage Label

“…Different scholars have written about the transformative potential of heritage that contributes to debates over controversies and therefore facilitates societal changes (Harrison 2013;Turunen 2019). One criticism concerning AHD is its homogenising attempt: although it promotes common views and consensus, the ideas and concepts of heritage are not problematised (Lähdesmäki 2019). Taking the EHL as AHD in the making, its potential lies in opening contexts of CEE-EU relations and making rigid ambiguities visible instead of adjusting to the existing contextual framework.…”

“…3 The EHL sites are situated in EU member countries, whereas 'European heritage' as a system of meanings and the transformation of sites into 'European heritage' takes place in interactions between European, national and local scales (Kaasik-Krogerus 2019). 4 Other than EU-level actors such as the EC, the EHL site practitioners, visitors and stakeholders also contribute to the diversity of this discourse and its controversies, that is, by taking subject positions (Lähdesmäki 2014).…”

Heritage Diplomacy Discourses in the EU: Notions on Cultural Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage, and Intercultural Dialogue among EU Officials and Heritage Practitioners

“…These focuses reflect the EU's more general interest in cultural heritage and its potential for intercultural dialogue. 1 During the past decades, the EU has launched several cultural policies and initiatives to promote cultural heritage and through it, advance peaceful dialogue and mutual respect between people with different cultural backgrounds both in Europe and beyond it (Lähdesmäki 2019;Lähdesmäki & Mäkinen 2019;Lähdesmäki et al 2020).…”

“…At the same time, cultural heritage itself functions as a source for diverse tensions, disputes, contradictions, and conflicts both in Europe and beyond. Indeed, scholars have seen some dissonance as intrinsic to the very idea of heritage (Smith 2006;Graham & Howard 2008;Kisić 2017;Lähdesmäki 2019). Defining, valorizing, preserving, and communicating the meanings of any form of heritage create boundaries and exclude some people while including others, and arrange objects, interpretations of the past, and people into certain categories or positions.…”