Cultural heritage management based on values

Cultural heritage management is perceived today as a modern system for the protection of historical monuments. However, the original meaning of heritage is intangible: with the emphasis shifted from the object (monuments) to the subject (recipients). Therefore, not only objects but also people become the area of interest.
The aim of this article is to present the concept of heritage management based on values. Literature analysis indicates that numerous values are attributed to historical monuments; the article enumerates almost 130 of them. Drawing upon the experience of axiology, the values should be divided into objective (belonging to the object) and subjective (belonging to the recipient). It will allow for an even better identification of heritage resources, and for adjusting the methods of heritage protection, education and promotion. The presented concept is a starting point for the elaboration of modern methods of preserving the relicts of our past and making use of them by contemporary generations.

Strategies of protection and identification of intangible cultural heritage: actions taken within national cultural policies and the involvement of local communities

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage of 2003 has established a new, holistic approach to cultural heritage and a new set of administrative and legal instruments and strategies of identifying, preserving, managing and promoting intangible cultural heritage. The policy of intangible culture entails the conceptualisation of the elements of intangible heritage in the national cultural policy framework. Administration strategies and methods are often confronted with scientific contextualisation and various policies of representation and identification. Thus, while articulating the idea of the growing importance of intangible cultural heritage, national authorities increasingly construct national inventories through processes of worldwide networking and positioning through symbolic meanings such as “national issues” and “national
culture”. The paper presents a brief review of administrative and legal measures and policies concerning the intangible cultural heritage of selected countries with a special emphasis on the community-based approach in the identification and safeguarding processes.

 

Protection of the cultural heritage of national and ethnic minorities in the Polish Constitution of 1997

The paper focuses on the protection of the material cultural heritage of national minorities and ethnic minorities in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Heritage protection is a responsibility imposed on public authorities. It should be noted that it is an obligation of general application and refers to the whole inheritance. The Constitution regulates the issues of protection of national minorities and ethnic minorities in very general terms, so general rules are applied.

 

Roman Catholic churches of the interwar Volyn: their construction and preservation in the context of memory/oblivion

The sacral architecture of the interwar Volyn was one of the realizations of the national idea and reflected the nation-building processes in the interwar Poland, which were visualized on the levels of both space and objects. The formation of a new architectural layer became a symbol of socio-cultural and civilizational transformations, which took place in the region in 1920-30s. The integration of stylistically new objects into the existing urban environment meant transferring new social ideo­logemes and spiritual values and, as a result, creating a new symbolic system. At the same time, preserving old temples (as well as defensive buildings) in this environment made use of the past for the purpose of the present. Political changes in the second half of the 20th century concluded into a dual attitude to the sacral heritage of the interwar period in Volyn, which reflected the ideo-logical motivation of the “memory-oblivion” paradigm formation. On the one hand, the existence of this monument group was denied (they didn’t match the socialistic cultural model). On the other hand, the artistic value and esthetic potential criteria dominated in evaluation of certain buildings. The problem of the temple construction and heritage preservation in Volyn arises because of the essentiality of this process not only to regional history, but to the history of Poland, Ukraine and Europe in general.

 

Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have been witnessing an increasing number of entries on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. With them, critical scientific trends describing its positive and negative effects began to emerge. In this article, I discuss the sense of such entries, showing their evaluative dimension as well as the difficulties of recognizing the areas of minority cultures as heritage – the areas which despite meeting all the entry criteria are in conflict with the modern ideas of European culture. I analyze these issues, using the Gypsy/Romani culture as an example – and more specifically the profession of bear handlers in Romania, which, due to its numerous similarities in history, training methods and folklore, I treat as representative of other European regions too. The text discusses the possible origins of this occupation, the place of the Ursari in the Romanian social structure together with their financial situation, and the attitude of the Church and State to bear handlers. It also presents the methods of animal training the Gypsies have used and passed on through the centuries, as well as the reasons why this profession has been disappearing in Romania. In the final (second) part of the article, I will discuss whether there is such a thing as the management of Ursari heritage (versus the management of inconvenient heritage), and if there is – what it entails.
The article uses qualitative research methods, including the analysis of historical sources (docu-ments from the offices of Moldovan, Wallachian and Transylvanian rulers and descriptions written by people travelling across former Romanian territories dated 14th–19th centuries) and ethnographic sources. In addition, the analysis also focuses on visual sources from Romanian territories associated with the Ursari as well as on the sources used during my own pilot ethnographic study on the cultural memory among the Roma from Romania.

 

Orthodoxy, or searching for identity by a church minority in Czechoslovakia

In the 20th century, in the Czechoslovak territory the Orthodox constituted a variously numerous minority. The number of adherents depended, among others, on the shifting state borders. However, the geopolitical changes were not the only factor of influence, both in the identity construction and the way of its presentation. As for historical factors, there were also population flows (different types of migration), as for canonical factors, the changes in jurisdiction, and as for theological ones, mainly the bonds with particular centres of the Orthodox Church worldwide, the relation to the past and self-demarcation vis-à-vis the majority Catholic Church. The aim of this article is to attempt to systematize these factors.