Constructing social Europe through European cultural heritage

ABSTRACT

The political and economic crises of the recent decades as well as the new changes brought on by globalization and digitalization have contributed to exacerbate social inequalities and injustice and revealed different social realities in Europe. The EU increasingly deals with social issues in its cultural and heritage policy. In this article, we explore the construction of this social dimension and advance the concept of ‘social Europe’ by exploring its cultural aspect based on our analysis of a recent EU heritage action, the European Heritage Label. In this action, the narrations of the European past and the attempts to foster common cultural heritage in Europe function as building blocks to create Europe as an intertwined cultural and social entity and to socialize a new generation of European citizens. We scrutinize the European Heritage Label and its notion of heritage from two perspectives. First, we analyse how the selection reports of these heritage sites construct a notion of social Europe. Second, we examine how visitors to these sites construct social Europe in their qualitative interviews. Key elements in this construction are narratives related to various values, mobility, and diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Europe
• European Heritage Label
• cultural heritage
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Referred interviews

VS1/2: Interview December 2017, Alcide De Gasperi House Museum, Italy. Italian, female, 18–25 years.

VS1/5: Interview December 2017, Alcide De Gasperi House Museum, Italy. Italian, male, 18–25 years.

VS3/9: Interview February 2018, Camp Westerbork, The Netherlands. Dutch, female, 61–65 years.

VS4/17: Interview January 2018, Lieu d’Europe, France. German, female, 18–25 years.

VS5/6: Interview October 2017, Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Hungary. French, female, 56–60 years.

VS7/10: Interview September 2017, Hambach Castle, Germany. German, female, 61–65 years.

VS7/12: Interview September 2017, Hambach Castle, Germany. German, female, 71–75 years.

VS7/21: Interview September 2017, Hambach Castle, Germany. German, male, 76–80 years.

VS8/20: Interview September 2017, Historic Gdánsk Shipyard, Poland. Polish, male, 36–40 years.

VS9/1: Interview January 2018, Mundaneum (Belgium). Belgian, male, 31–35 years.

VS9/10: Interview January 2018, Mundaneum (Belgium). Belgian, female, 18–25 years.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [grant number 330602 (HERIDI)] and H2020 European Research Council [grant number 636177 (EUROHERIT)].

Notes on contributors

Viktorija L.A. Čeginskas

Viktorija L.A. Čeginskas (PhD) is a Postdoctoral Researcher on the HERIDI project at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has previously worked in the EUROHERIT research project and published in a number of peer-reviewed journals on (multilingual and European) belonging and (transnational) identity, cultural heritage, and Europe. Čeginskas is editor of the international open access journal Ethnologia Fennica since 2020 and recently co-edited the volume Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research: Ethnography with a Twist (Routledge, 2020).

Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus

Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus (DSocSc) is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland. She has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the EUROHERIT project at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specializes in media and communication; identity and belonging; heritage; critical geopolitics; and European studies in the EU context, especially in Central and East European countries. From 2015 to 2018, she was a member of the Jean Monnet Module, East within Europe, funded by Erasmus+ at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.

Tuuli Lähdesmäki

Tuuli Lähdesmäki (PhD, DSocSc) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research focuses on cultural identities; belonging; cultural heritage; strategies of representing, narrating, and interpreting the past; and governance of diversities. Between 2015 and 2020, Lähdesmäki led the EUROHERIT project (Legitimation of European Cultural Heritage and the Dynamics of Identity Politics in the EU), funded by the European Research Council. The project members jointly authored the monograph Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label (Routledge, 2020). Lähdesmäki leads the HERIDI project (EU Heritage Diplomacy and the Dynamics of Inter-Heritage Dialogue), funded by the Academy of Finland.

Katja Mäkinen

Katja Mäkinen (PhD) is an Adjunct Professor and a Senior Researcher on the DIALLS project at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Mäkinen’s research focuses on citizenship, participation, identities, and cultural heritage; she specializes in a conceptual approach to analysing EU programmes on culture and citizenship. She has worked as a junior lecturer in political science and a lecturer in cultural policy as well as in several research projects at the University of Jyväskylä, most recently the EUROHERIT.