Aesthetics, bureaucracy, and the politics of patrimony: the case of the Greek Central Archaeological Council

The author reviews the operation of the most important decisionmaking body in Greece for archaeological and cultural work, as well as for the urban and environmental ethic of heritage protection, the Central Archaeological Council (CAC), functioning in the context of the Ministry of Culture. The CAC is a site of mediation between the state (seen as an entity with many internal contradictions) and various private interests. The author reveals the deeply developmental character of the aesthetic and symbolic presence of monumental landscapes in modern Greece on the basis of research into an extremely rich source of primary materials, the archives of proceedings of the CAC for the period 1974-90, research which included the examination of approximately 16 000 cases. The usual pessimistic view is that state bureaucracy merely promotes the interests of specific socioeconomic powers. But bureaucratic routines can mask deeper and wider processes, such as issues of national development, identity, and self-respect, questions of disciplinary prevalence and aesthetics (as in the case of archaeologists and architects), and problems of coordination of coresponsible state agencies. In Greece such processes take place in the context of an historically established, fierce, Western critique of Greek cultural policies. More specifically, the author tries to answer the questions of how outcomes are mediated by the bureaucratic apparatus, how power relations are internalised in the CAC, and what aspect masks what. It is suggested that the opening up of such bureaucratic processes to wider social strata could free new possibilities of social evolution. This started happening in the subperiod 1981-90 alongside the introduction of new institutions and policies in the context of the Ministry of Culture.