Dimensions of Heritage and Memory: Multiple Europes and the Politics of Crisis (Critical Heritages of Europe)

Dimensions of Heritage and Memory is a landmark contribution on the politics of the past in Europe today. The book explores the meanings of heritage in a time of crisis, when the past permeates social and political divisions, identity contests and official projects to forge a European community.

Providing an overview of the literature and an analysis of the assumptions, values and philosophies embedded within European-level policy, the book explores different dimensions of heritage and memory, from official sites, museums and policy, to party politics, historical re-enactments and the everyday ways in which people use the past to make sense of who they are. The volume explores how different understandings of and attachments to the European past produce different ‘Europes’ in the present, accounting for today’s tense social and political relations. The book also explores formative histories for European identities that are neglected or hidden because of political circumstances and non-official heritage. Contributors consider the meanings of interlocking crises, such as economic fallout, xenophobia and the fragmentation of the EU, for new understandings of Europe’s past in the present.

Dimensions of Heritage and Memory

will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of heritage and memory studies, museum studies, history, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology and politics. The book will also be interesting to practitioners and cultural heritage policy-makers.

Chapters 1, 3, 4, 9, and 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Christopher Whitehead is Professor of Museology at Newcastle University, UK, and Visiting Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. He publishes on the theory and politics of museums heritage and memory to inform critical and innovative practice. He co-ordinated the Horizon 2020 CoHERE (Critical Heritagesof Europe) project from which this book arises.

Susannah Eckersley is a senior lecturer at Newcastle University, UK, with expertise in museums and difficult heritage, in particular relating to the German past in the present. She was the deputy co-ordinator of the CoHERE project and will lead en/counter/points – a new collaborative research project on culture and integration in Europe from 2019–2022.

Mads Daugbjerg is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. His main research concerns the contemporary practices and dynamics relating to cultural and natural heritage, social memory, national and transnational identity and cultural tourism, with a particular interest in performative, experiential and immersive approaches to heritage.

Gönül Bozoğlu has a PhD from Humboldt University’s Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (Germany) and works on European and Turkish museums, heritage and memory. After working on the Horizon 2020 CoHERE (Critical Heritages of Europe) project, she has taken up a Leverhulme Fellowship at Newcastle University, UK, to study Greek-Istanbuli memory culture.