Cultural Heritage In The European Union

This volume offers a critical inquiry into the ever-evolving notion of cultural heritage and the way it has been made accessible, governed, and protected by the institutional, operational, and legal structures of the European Union.

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.

This book includes research papers submitted to and presented during the first international conference on Cultural Sustainable Tourism (CST) that was held in Thessaloniki, Greece in November of 2017. Discussing complex relations between Culture, tourism, and the role of planners and architects in their maintenance, this conference was jointly organized by IEREK –International Experts for Research Enrichment and Knowledge Exchange- and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The conference was an attempt to shed a light on the significance of Culture and Heritage as two important factors attracting tourists and promoting economic growth and convey civilizations through tourism. Themes covered in this book give an overview on current research and topics of discussion that focus on Cultural sustainable tourism through several sections. The first section, titled “Art, Architecture and Culture”, discusses urban regeneration as a road to the preservation of cultural and tourist destinations and the importance of understanding and benefitting from our heritage to allow for modern day improvements. “Heritage Tourism”, the section 2 of the book, is more focused on offering nontraditional solutions and management plans to sustain cultural tourism and improve quality of life around historically significant areas. The third section on the “City and Rural Tourism” follows by providing sustainable strategies to attract tourists and promoting the use of existing resources. The last and final section with the title of “Sustainable Tourism, Development and Environmental Management” maneuvers around the different yet common environmental issues existing today and proposes new and innovative solutions for their elimination. Presenting a wide range of topics in chapters, this book provides the scientific community with a collection of unique and enlightening literature.

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.

The book explores the relationship between cultural heritage and local economic development by introducing the original idea that one possible mediator between the two can be identified as creativity. The book econometrically verifies this idea and demonstrates that cultural heritage, through its inspirational role on different creative talents, generates an indirect positive effect on local economic development. These results justify important new policy recommendations in the field of cultural heritage.

This open access book discusses political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities in contemporary Europe. Ongoing debates on migration, on local, national, inter- and transnational levels, prove that it is a divisive issue with regards to understanding European integration and identity. At the same time, the European Union increasingly invests in projects related to European heritage, museums, and cultural memory networks, while having to take dissonant heritages into account. These processes in their combination offer an interesting dynamic and form the complex puzzle that poses challenging questions for anyone involved in academic research, heritage practices, and policy debates. With this puzzle at its core, this book explicitly focuses on slippery and transforming notions of Europe and critically discusses ongoing and transforming power structures of heritage and memory in today’s Europe. The book combines theoretical and methodological contributions to the debates on European heritage and memory studies and in-depth analyses of empirical case studies. Its main aim is to bring research fields concerning memory and heritage into a closer dialogue and thus explore the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Europe.

This invaluable book, for the first time, brings together the international and European Union legal framework on cultural property law and the restitution of cultural property. Drawing on the author's extensive experience of international disputes, it provides a very comprehensive and useful commentary. Theories of cultural nationalism and cultural internationalism and their founding principles are explored. Irini Stamatoudi also draws on soft law sources, ethics, morality, public feeling and the role of international organisations to create a complete picture of the principles and trends emerging today.

European Heritage, Dialogue and Digital Practices focuses on the intersection of heritage, dialogue and digital culture in the context of Europe. Responding to the increased emphasis on the potential for heritage and digital technologies to foster dialogue and engender communitarian identities in Europe, the book explores what kind of role digital tools, platforms and practices play in supporting and challenging dialogue about heritage in the region. Drawing on fieldwork involving several European museums and heritage organisations, the chapters in this volume critically engage with the role of digital technology in heritage work and its association with ideas of democratisation, multivocality and possibilities for feedback and dialogic engagement in the emerging digital public sphere. The book also provides a framework for understanding dialogue in relation to other commonly used approaches in heritage institutions, such as participation, engagement and intercultural exchange. The authors map out the complex landscape of digitally mediated heritage practices in Europe, both official and unofficial, by capturing three distinct areas of practice: perceptions and applications of digitally mediated dialogues around heritage within European museums and cultural policy, facilitation of dialogue between European museums and communities through participatory design approaches and non-official mobilisation of heritage on social media. European Heritage, Dialogue and Digital Practices will be of interest to both scholars and students in the fields of heritage and museum studies, digital heritage, media studies and communication, the digital humanities, sociology and memory studies. The book will also appeal to policy makers and professionals working in a variety of different fields.