Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, XVIIIe-XXIe si�cle

The mayor, the ancestors and the chapel: clientelism, emotion and heritagisation in southern France

“…Within this framework of cooperation, heritage is claimed and used by the social actors as an element of the negotiations, imposing a new material element in the symbolic system of the acknowledgement of power. French society, as any other Western state, deals with heritage not only as a corpus of representative pieces of art safeguarded in museums, but has also transformed collection, curation, exhibition and transmission of cultural heritage into social practices and collective values (Poulot 2006;Bendix 2009) that tend to create consensus and shared references for the 'imagined communities' (Anderson 1983), be it at national, regional or local level. The spread of the heritage consciousness implies some local response and creativity and the implementation of heritage technologies at any scale of the society (De Jong and Rowlands 2007).…”

State production of cultural nationalism: political leaders and preservation policies for historic buildings in France and Italy

“…Legislative and administrative measures soon began that underlined the national interest in historic buildings or ‘monuments’ (for overviews, see for instance Hurel ; Poulot ). A decree in Year II forbade damaging ‘libraries and monuments belonging to the nation’ and in 1809, the Code Pénal (Article 237) included criminal penalties for those who ‘damaged monuments whose purpose was public use or decoration’.…”

“…Preservation policies aided the central state in its attempts to control local groups which it sought to constrain and co‐opt to maintain ‘national unity’ (cf. Leniaud : 365–84; Poulot ch. 4).…”

“…They argue that ‘the state’ (‘l'Etat’) used protection of ‘historic monuments’ as part of strategies to create myths and symbols about ‘the French nation’ (e.g. Auduc ; Poulot ) and against centrifugal tendencies, notably from movements promoting regional or local identities (for differing views, see Kowalski ; Leniaud : 365–384).…”

“…Even when seeking a wider context, the analysis is focused on France – e.g. Poulot entitles his book ‘A history of heritage in the West’, but it is mostly on France, with other countries being brought in as influences on France.…”