Recent political developments in the world call for new conceptualizations of cultural heritage. A dramatic increase in the mobility of people and heritage objects across Europe and around the world has revealed gaps, flaws and insufficiencies in a view of heritage as stable, homogenous, and site-bound. New conceptions of heritage are called for, conceptions which can accommodate diversity, transnational identities, and refugee experiences.
The Swedish Ministry of Culture is soon proposing a new ‘inclusive’ heritage politics with ‘room for different perspectives on history’, based on the premise that ‘our common heritage is in constant movement and is shaped by people together’. But to what extent is this view compatible with the existing national and international institutions, structures and regulations for heritage management and heritage consumption? How deep goes the traditional static, site- and nation-bound concept of heritage? How are ideas of stability and homogeneity manifested in common conceptions of heritage? What changes are required to instead privilege movement, diversity, and sharing? Could a reframing of heritage as movement break up ideas of essential bounded cultural units, and allow heritage to be a vehicle for intercultural respect and tolerance?
With examples and experiences from across the world, six leading heritage scholars explore how Critical Heritage Studies can provide a wider framework and deeper analysis of the possibility to reframe heritage as movement. The first day of the conference, 26 Sept, is open for researchers, students, and professionals interested in issues of heritage as movement, with an expected number of around 100 participants. In combination with the international group, there is an internal and interdisciplinary reference group of scholars from within Stockholms University supporting the conference.
The speakers of the open day (26 Sept), and the titles of the presentations, are:
- Jiat-Hwee Chang (Singapore) "Permeability, Mobility and Mutability: Three ´Movements´ in the Colonial Built Heritage of Southeast Asia"
- Valdimar Hafstein (Iceland) "Heritage in Motion: Masculinity, Modernity, and Uprightness in Traditional Wrestling"
- Siân Jones (Great Britain) ' "Dynamic and ever-changing": shifting relations in the politics and practice of heritage in Scotland'
- Ali Mozaffari (Iran & Australia) "Bound by heritage? Re-imagining the domain of Iranian culture since the 1990s"
- Helaine Silverman (USA) "Affiliative Reterritorialization: Monument, Heritage and the Japanese Colony in Peru"
- Tim Winter (Australia) "Heritage diplomacy and One Belt One Road"
Lists of abstracts will be published here in August.
Do you want to join the conference on the day of open lectures? Please register with Ida Hughes Tidlund, coordinator, before 14 Sept 2016, at chsn@erg.su.se
For questions regarding program and contents, please contact the conference chair Anna Källén, at anna.kallen@ark.su.se
