Since the beginning of the 19th century religious buildings and artefacts of the West have been involved in a continuous process of musealization. In the time-period subsequent to the Second World War, the general forces of secularisation increasingly turned religious buildings, most of them churches, into heritage and substantial parts of Christian practices into history. On a global scale (Western), conservation and heritage practices have been applied on tangible and intangible expressions...

Heritage practices often lead to social exclusion. As an "Authorized Heritage Discourse" (AHD) (Smith 2006) may define what is considered to be heritage, a certain set of social values can come to exclude other values. By formulating heritage policies which reproduce the existing AHD government may further such exclusion. Every now and then AHDs are challenged, leading to what political scientists like Ross (2007; 2009) call "cultural contestations" between groups. These are surrounded ...

La conservation des quartiers anciens ne se réalise probablement jamais sans être accompagnée de tensions sociales de différentes sortes. Si, dans les années 1960 et 1970, de nombreux projets ont  pu être motivés par la résistance citoyenne aux  formes les plus néfastes de la rénovation urbaine, aujourd’hui, on a l’impression que la volonté de conserver le patrimoine urbain aboutit presque systématiquement à la «gentrification – un terme qui ne renvoie pas uniquement à l’embourgeoisement d’un...

We would like to propose a session, building on the one we ran at the 2014 CHS conference in Canberra, on how emotion and affect feature in the fields of heritage and museums studies, memory studies, public history, heritage tourism, studies of the built and urban environment, conservation, archives and any field of study that deals with the emotional impact and use of the past in the present. There is an increasing interest in how emotion is a form of judgement on things that affect ou...

In addressing the theme of this conference, we argue that archaeology, above and beyond the traditional goals of research and post-excavation analyses, may contribute to economic development, education and the creation of identities and communities. Our session "What does Heritage Change? Case Studies in Archaeology," is divided into two themes starting with archaeological practice through its legislation and management. Contract or commercial archaeology increasingly comprises the vast major...

The field of heritage has emerged as a key site of reflection. Influenced by shifts in the academy (e.g., post-colonial, post-structural and feminist theories), heritage scholars are bringing increased attention to the deployment of heritage as both a conceptual category and a contested field of power and discourse. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain in communicating what comprises the theoretical and methodological toolkit of heritage studies. Scholars are still mapping out the nuan...

The Manifesto of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (2011) argues for a more critical approach to heritage: heritage from below, writ large, in service of society. The integration of heritage and museum studies with those of community, development, memory, planning, public history and tourism is urged in the Manifesto, as is opening up to other disciplinary traditions such as anthropology, political science and sociology, for dialogue and collaboration on external research and poli...

This session seeks to explore the role of urban heritage in mediating and contesting political conflict in the context of divided cities. We take urban heritage in a broad sense to include places left, scarred or transformed by geo-political dispute, national and ethnic division, violence and war. The case studies can include tangible spaces such as elements of border architecture, historic sites, ruins and urban traces of the conflict, and memorials; as well as intangible elements of city, i...

Cities are growingly being faced by social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges imposing health and social risks. Rapid urbanization, population growth, climate change are only some of the major global challenges that a 21st century city needs to respond to. The current challenging global environment has led to the development of new approaches to the concept of "sustainable city" a city that caters for current and future generation. For instance, the idea of smart city (a city th...

This session will address the potential and limitations of heritage as a tool for leverage, empowerment and dissent in Africa. It is widely acknowledged that heritage—the selective valuation and use of the past in the present—can be an oppressive. Heritage work in Africa has even been characterized as "an instrument for dictatorship" (Peterson et al. 2015:28) because it is often implicated in upholding particular narratives and political orders, imposing a singular vision onto a heterog...

Le concept de patrimoine culturel immatériel (PCI) a fait l’objet de nombreux colloques et publications depuis la promulgation de la Convention pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel de l’UNESCO en 2003, voire même avant. Toutefois, peu d’entre eux se sont attardés à la question de l’impact réel des systèmes et politiques mis en place pour favoriser le développement des pratiques culturelles transmises de génération en génération comme les arts et l’artisanat traditionnels, les ...

Photography was recognized as an instrument of heritage preservation from the moment of its inception in the early nineteenth century, when projects such as Les Excursions Daguerriennes (1841-1843), a set of Romantic engravings of monuments based on photographic documents, established the links between sight and science, memory and history, hortatory reification and ‘ruin lust’ (Brian Dillon, 2014). This session was conceived in the certain knowledge that almost every speaker at t...

Heritage has multiple, concurrent origins. It is performed and produced by individuals, groups and organizations, or institutions on various scales. It is a transformative process and thus closely connected to the transitional. In heritage, transitionality may be usefully conceptualized under the rubric of the liminal, which at its core anticipates change and transformation, structure-agency relationships, affect, and human experience—all significant issues in recent theoretical debates in th...

Among other aims, the Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) Movement, most exemplified by the promotional efforts of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), seeks to push heritage studies beyond its more traditional, longstanding "borders" of investigating the progress, as well as shortcomings, of the museum and heritage enterprise. Indeed, in the manifesto for ACHS, it is noted that heritage studies ought to expand to include a broader range of disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) the...

In exploring the broader question “What does heritage change?” this session presents work that is extending heritage policies and practices beyond elite cultural narratives. Using diverse disciplinary perspectives and drawing from case studies around the world, the presenters explore contexts in which stakeholders’ perspectives and choices have been catalysts for change, democratized knowledge, or exposed gaps in contemporary heritage practices. The case studies reveal complex and often conte...

As the interface between past and present, heritage is deeply involved in articulations of personal and group identity, working to unite and harmonize group relations, and, simultaneously causing frictions, fractions, and violence. Critical heritage theory reveals that values and approaches to heritage are articulated both within and across regions (such as Asia, or Europe). A vital, and as yet unanswered, question centres on the degree to which heritage in Asia fundamentally differs from ...