AANK16109U Heritagizing Pasts, Presents and Futures

Over the last four decades much societal attention – and to a lesser extent anthropological focus – has shifted from the category of tradition to that of heritage. In contrast with tradition – the historical antinomy and even negation of modernity – heritage itself is a modern concept, in the sense that it gained currency in modern or even postmodern times. After the era of “high modernity”, the concept of heritage – along with such concepts as “identity” – emerged which denoted some degree of historical continuity into the (post-)modern presence. After all, heritage – like inheritance – connotes assets that are transferrable from one generation to the other. At the same time, the label of heritage sets specific sites, objects and practices apart for contemplation, viewing or experiencing as something out of the ordinary, making it into something (quasi-)sacred rather than profane (in Durkheimian sense), and turning it into a spectacle (in Debordian sense) for others than the heritage constituency.

But in this course we will at once debunk common temporal notions of unilinearity (from past via presence into future) and paradoxical spatial notions of heritage as at once having local currency (in terms of denoting unique “identity”) and universal currency (as in world heritage) by looking at the effects of heritagization. We will also debunk the sacrality of heritage by investigating the connections with political, economic, cultural, religious and other “dimensions” of social life. In this way, we will use heritage as a synecdoche towards a holistic ethnographic understanding of such connections in our differentiated and fragmented societies.

This course will be loosely connected with the HERA-funded project “HERILIGION: The heritagization of religion and the sacralization of heritage in contemporary Europe” and will involve small-scale field research by students in Denmark (or, if desirable and possible, elsewhere) in sites that are officially labeled heritage, or that specific groups claim as “their” heritage.