The notion of heritage is closely linked to processes of change. In the Western context, the definition of heritage as "a contemporary product shaped from history" (Harvey 2010) highlights the extent to which our relationship with the past is being continually re-configured. However, there is a future dimension implied in this relationship that is often neglected; to paraphrase William Morris, the sense in which heritage testifies to the hopes and aspirations of those now passed away. Making ...

Dans le cadre de cette session, nous souhaitons faire, dans une perspective multidisciplinaire et critique, un état des lieux qui interroge doublement, à la lumière de trois axes que sont la narrativité, la temporalité et la performativité, la patrimonialisation des sujets sensibles tant sur ses rôles, ses formes et ses effets sur les sociétés qui les entreprennent, que sur sa fonction révélatrice d’un monde en changement. L’espace public laisse une place grandissante aux objets, aux li...

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...

Le patrimoine n’est pas un donné, c’est un construit culturel et social, dynamique et itératif (Gravari-Barbas). La construction patrimoniale est la construction d’une croyance à partager/imposer. Le statut d’objet patrimonial que l’«on» (experts, élites, décideurs…) donne à un objet suppose de le saisir comme spécifique. C’est aussi l’occasion d’une saisie de la dynamique qui amène la spécificité patrimoniale, cette même dynamique qui est le terrain d’action des politiques, des prises en cha...

Architectural historian John R. Stubbs suggests that architectural conservation is concerned with historic buildings and their sites as well as their associated accoutrements, such as furnishings and fittings. But what happens if the building itself is not seen as “historic” or even worthy of a heritage designation, much less conservation, while its site and furnishings are significant in aesthetic, cultural or social terms; in other words what happens when a building’s decorative arts tru...

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...