Uneasy associations? Critique, cultural heritage and the Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

In this introduction to the second thematic section in the International Journal of Heritage Studies exploring heritage-making in the Mediterranean region in the last four years we set out why it is still pertinent to explore heritage-making within such a spatial frame and discuss how exploring diverse ‘heritage associations’ can draw out relations of power in heritage-making dynamics in this part of the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage associations
• Mediterranean
• ethnographic knowledge-making
• critique

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Bullen

Claire Bullen is an anthropologist, currently based at the University of Tübingen as a post-doctoral researcher. Herresearch interests include cultural policies and social relations in and of cities, questions of power and ethnographiccomparison. She is an associated researcher at INAMA (ENSA Marseille) and IDEMEC (CNRS-UMR 7307, Aix-Marseille University). She carries out fieldwork in Algeria, France and the UK.

Cyril Isnart

Cyril Isnart, Research Fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research and member of the IDEMEC (Aix  Marseille Université CNRS); Cyril Isnart is an anthropologist and currently works on religion, music and heritagemaking  in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean. He was responsible for the international programme ‘Religious Memories and Heritage Practices in the Mediterranean. Confessional Coexistence and Heritage Assertion’ (2013–2015), funded by the research agency of Portugal FCT and co-founded the international Network of Researchers on Heritagisations known as Respatrimoni in 2009 (repatrimoni.wordpress.com). He is the editor of the journal Lusotopie. He co-edited with Julien Bondaz, Florence Graezer Bideau and Anais Leblon, Les vocabulaires locaux du ‘patrimoine’, Zurich, Lit Verlag 2014) and with Cerezales Nathalie, The Religious Heritage Complex. Legacy, Conservation, and Christianity (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2020).