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Networks
- AHDig - Associação das Humanidades Digitais
- Buildings: Dissecting Transpositions in Architectural Knowledge (1880-1980)
- Crime, Justice and the Law Network
- Designing Heritage Tourism Landscapes
- EADH - The European Association for Digital Humanities
- EAHN - European Architectural History Network
- European Research Group Minorities in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (15th-17th centuries)
- Évora Museums Network
- GeocritiQ - Ibero-American digital platform for the dissemination of scientific work
- GRETA - Grupo de Estudios del Tabaco
- HEIRNET - History Educators International Research Network
- Heritas: estudos de Património
- History of the Inquisitions
- International Network for the History of Hospitals
- International Network Small Cities in Time
- ISTO - Alliance on Training and Research in Social and Fair Tourism
- Museums, Patrimony & Tourism International Research Network
- Quarantine Studies Network
- RAalg - Rede de Arquivos do Algarve
- RBev – Rede de Bibliotecas de Évora
- Red Columnaria
- Rede de Arquivos Escolares de Évora
- Rede de Bibliotecas Públicas do Baixo Alentejo
- Rede de Estudos de Cidades, Ferrovias e Portos – Perspetivas Históricas e Realidades Atuais
- Rede Intermunicipal de Bibliotecas do Alentejo Central
- Rede Intermunicipal de Bibliotecas do Alentejo Central
- Red Iberoamericana de Turismo Rural
- Red Temática de Literaturas Infantiles y Juveniles en el Marco Ibérico
- REIPAV - Rede de Estudos Internacional Padre António Vieira
- REPORT(H)A - Portuguese Network on Environmental History
- Respatrimoni - Network of the Researchers on Heritagisations
- RHITMO - Red de Investigación Hispanoamericana de los tiempos Modernos
- RID - Rede Interuniversitária em Demografia
- RIUL - Rede Internacional de Universidades Leitoras
- RMPV - Rede de Museus Portugueses do Vinho
- Royal Studies Network
- Rural RePort – Rede de História Rural em Português
- SECAH - Sociedad Española de Estudios de la Cerámica Antigua en Hispania
- Society of Biblical Literature
- Solo Madrid es Corte
- Tensions of Europe. Technology and and the Making of Europe
- UNIMED - Mediterranean Universities Union
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Respatrimoni - Network of the Researchers on Heritagisations
The notion of heritage is surely one of the best tools social scientists have at their disposal to analyse how societies deal with their past, especially regarding their complex and ambiguous relationship with history and memory. However, heritage is also a way of constructing our present and locality, in transnational contexts as much as in local communities.
The recent concepts of Biodiversity, Cultural Diversity or Intangible Cultural Heritage proposed by Unesco to defend non-architectural heritage have met with considerable success, reinforce the centrality of such principles as loss, safeguard, and development that have already changed the social and economic landscapes of sites classified as World Heritage.
However, critical views on heritagisation are strikingly uncommon because heritage, either material, natural or immaterial, is often looked upon as authentic or irreducible civilisational testimony, as well as a real powerful tourism-related tool of economic development. Heritage is generally studied and used by specialists in charge of it (curators, politicians, economic agents or associations) as a « corpus » per se , to be considered and valorised as a mere ‘civilisational trace’ , cut off from the social, historical and cultural context that produced it. The constitution of museum collections or the publication of Unesco’s world heritage lists are nevertheless the result of an act of classification whose criteria are as much reliant on cultural and historical factors and the people involved in selecting and manipulating heritage, as it has been observed in other social phenomena, such as kinship, religion and economy.
In other words, the potential elevation of natural, material and immaterial items to a heritage status – and the effects this may have – must be taken and analysed as a social fact like any other. The recent development of heritage studies inside academia and the growing interest in heritage outside of it offer an ideal opportunity to think heritagisation as a social practice and a world view, inscribed in the bricolage dynamics that we find between the global and the local, between history, memory and identity.
In fact, a growing number of researchers (at doctoral and postdoctoral level, but not only) are today engaged in interrogating heritage objects and practices within the humanities (archeology, history, political sciences, geography, anthropology, etc.).
The Network of Researchers on Heritagisations, its blog and its mailinglist aim to provide easy access to information and updated news (supplied by its members). All announcements concerning conferences, calls for papers, publication opportunities, job offers, courses, symposiums and workshops should be sent to res.patrimoni@gmail.com to be posted on the blog and sent to the mailing list. We insist on the fact that the body of the message must contain all information and, optionnaly a complementary file may be attached and a link provided for futher details. The relevance and liveliness of the blog depends entirely on the members’ shared commitment to exchange information, so we encourage all to participate.
Members: Cyril Isnart & Nevena Tatovic