Reflecting on heritage and power: dynamics, strategies and appropriations in the Catalan Pyrenees and the French Alps

Abstract

In this article we will explore the way in which different agents appropriate and use heritage to compete in specific power scenarios. We approach heritage discourses and practices as defining specific political arenas within which power relations are reconfigured. The protection of spaces and places as well as the processes of patrimonialisation that take place inside specific localities give rise to the emergence of new ways of exercising power. We will examine two ethnographic cases from South European mountain areas: the Parc National des Écrins in the French Alps and a Romanesque church in the Catalan Pyrenees. An analysis of both the protected area and the constructed heritage will enable us to focus on heritage as being produced, identified and valued within specific logics and value systems. We examine the dynamics that heritage and heritage policies produce in each context as well as the interest they promote. Heritage both organises different fields of forces and is appropriated by politicians, experts, and economic actors. We will discuss the entanglements, forces and dynamics that are activated and played out as a result of heritage processes in the larger process of contemporary political transformations.

Keywords:

• Cultural heritage
• natural heritage
• power
• mountain areas
• heritage policies

Funding

This study was carried out as part of a project entitled: “El patrimonio cultural y natural en tiempos de crisis. Retos, adaptaciones y estrategias en contextos locales”, which was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the FEDER Program (CSO2015-68611-R ). The French fieldwork was also founded by the Fondation Fyssen Grant (2003).

Notes

1. The legislation on heritage is different in these two countries. For a deeper understanding of the French context, see, e.g. Babelon and Chastel (1994), Audrerie (1997), Davallon, Micoud, and Tardy (1997), Kalaora (1997), Poulot (1998), Chiva (1997) and Szarka (2002). For Spain, see Alegre (1994, 2012), Álvarez (2004), López Bravo (2004) and Querol (2009).

2. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions that have obliged us to clarify our position on heritage discourses and power rhetoric.

3. Both De Certeau’s (1990) and Herzfeld’s (1991, 1997) notion of rhetoric intend to interrelate the expressive and performative dimensions of the social production of meaning. This concept helps to illustrate the nature of linguistic practices that are also ways to act upon reality.

4. We change to the first person in order to keep the individual point of view of the anthropologist in the field. In order to gain a deeper insight into these studies please refer to del Mármol (2012, 2014) and Siniscalchi (2002, 2007, 2008).

5. ‘Traversées. La Bérarde – Refuge du Châtelleret. Un cheminement dans le massif des Écrins. Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans’ (25 June–25 September 2000), Photos by Maryvonne Arnaud, texts by Pascal Amel, Jacques Darras, Jacques Lacarrière, Hervé Planquois (Musée Dauphinois/Parc National des Écrins).

6. The introduction of the notion of ‘heritage’ in the Park language depended on the political changes in the Park and more generally in the national parks in France (Siniscalchi 2002).

7. Project ‘Leader II’ for example or ‘Dans les Écrins. Dossier de candidature au Programme d’initiative Européenne Leader +’ (2001, Gap, PNE).

8. It is important to note that this is one amongst different current positions amidst contemporary theories of monument restoration (Martínez 2000). None of the architects or technicians supporting this position mentioned the existence of different and opposing criteria in restoration discourses currently in force, some of them being closer to the position of the local builder and the parish priest.