Le patrimoine rural, outil politique ou enjeu de société?

Abstract

This article examines the growing importance of the concept of rural heritage in contemporary France by exploring its creation and institutionalisation through French cultural policies. The French state has sought to define rural heritage as a social and economic tool enabling different social categories to promote rural France as a new object of consumption mainly aiming at urban society. The concept of rural heritage has become the object of an intense appropriation by the declining farming industry, which uses it as a mean to create a new relationship with its territory. Considered as an ongoing and future project, rural heritage remains a major issue for the future of French society as a whole.