Abstract

REIS, Manuela. From dead stones to living practices: from material heritage to the relevance of intangible heritage. CIDADES [online]. 2020, n.41, pp.262-280. ISSN 2182-3030.  https://doi.org/10.15847/cct.21869.

Important changes associated with the concept of heritage occurred in Portuguese society after the 25th of April. To its extent, Portugal followed and integrated in its practices of safeguarding and enhancing heritage the main European cultural perspectives in reformulation since the 1960s, and which deepened especially in the 1970s and 1980s. In the last two decades, monumentalist conceptions of heritage and centralist state policies that monopolize the safeguarding and definition of heritage, as a symbol of national power and identity, have been challenged. As a cultural institution, not only does heritage no longer concern only monumental buildings, but also the perspectives of other social actors are now part of the definition of heritage. Heritage boom - an expression that dramatizes the social phenomenon of the explosion of heritage sites, considered as the “modern obsession” for the past idealized due to the accelerated loss of solid references in a globalized world in constant change (Hewison, 1987; Lowenthal, 2002- 1985]) -, also arrived in Portugal. In the past 20 years, Portugal has also been involved in the discussion about the new categories of heritage, symbols and representations of the distant or recent past that the advance of modernity put at risk of destruction or oblivion. Thus, forms of erudite or vernacular architecture, urban and rural, public and private or monumental and non-monumental buildings, old industrial buildings, cities or urban complexes, landscapes and ecological environments at risk, skills, techniques, marginalized and regressing activities and cultures tend to become heritage. The growth and certification of the “intangible heritage” category is a powerful weapon of political pressure for the extension of heritage assets. It is, however, a form of ambivalent political pressure. It can either provide communities, particularly rural communities, with instruments to minimize the marginalization they have suffered, or mask it through artificial processes to safeguard heritage assets that have already lost the social actors that supported them.

Keywords : heritage policy; material and immaterial heritage; communities.

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