The Added European Value of Cultural Heritage. The European Heritage Label

Europe’s cultural heritage plays a strategic role in European Union (EU) politics. Heritage is viewed as a shared resource and common good that eventually can produce a broader acceptance of the EU. This article focuses on the exploration of European heritage in the context of the European Heritage Label (EHL), a recent EU heritage action. It first gives an overview of the EHL action and examines the significance attributed to the European dimension of heritage. Next the article discusses the added value of the EHL network of heritage sites for the promotion of European heritage in the context of the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) 2018. The two initiatives share similar approache…

Autobiographical materiality and affects in research of everyday objects

Poly-space : Creating new concepts through reflexive team ethnography

In this chapter, we outline the development process of the concept of poly-space – which conceptualizes the entanglement of multiple moments and different spatial, temporal, affective and cognitive experiences in one physical place, the heritage site. The concept was conceived based on the experiences that members of the EUROHERIT project gained while conducting ethnographic fieldwork at 11 heritage sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the European Commission. We argue that collaborative interpretive reflexivity – a form of affective sharing among researchers that goes beyond traditional conceptualizations of team ethnography – was the key aspect contributing to and enabling ou…