Significance and social value of Cultural Heritage: Analyzing the fractures of Heritage

Heritage is a metacultural process in the sense that artifacts, buildings, landscapes, festivals or any other heritage element are not by themselves heritage unless there is social value attached to them. From this point of view, heritage is a peculiar type of cultural product because it implies a metacultural reflection about culture itself. Heritage implies "adding value to culture." It is a value-laden concept with no neutral ground of connotation. Therefore, heritage-related projects need to incorporate critical research on the instrumentalizations of heritage policies and the conflicts that arise. This contribution analyzes some of the factors that are part of heritage-making processes -or heritagization processes- and concentrate on the fractures that can be observed in heritage research and practice. A first type of divide is linked to the distance between those who understand heritage as socially constructed and those who continue having the perspective that heritage are things. Other fractures are related to the distance among the various social actors involved in heritagization processes, particularly the distance between managers of heritage, policy makers, and local population.