Governance Structures for the Heritage Commons: La Ponte-Ecomuséu-Ecomuseum of Santo Adriano, Spain

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the importance of incorporating local perceptions of heritage. It addresses governance structures of heritage and the political economies that give rise to them. It stems from a growing dissatisfaction with the ever more dysfunctional and socially and economically unfair character that heritage management has adopted in Spain since the start of a devastating economic crisis in 2008. The aim of our exploratory inquiry is to prompt a necessary debate about new potential forms of heritage governance in Spain that could have broader implications elsewhere in heritage management. To do so, we first situate recent conceptualizations of heritage in the current postindustrial economic context. We draw inspiration from the theory of cognitive capitalism, which argues that the modern economy has superseded the classical differentiation between economic wealth derived from labor processes on one side and physical capital on the other. Cognitive capitalism holds that the wealth created today derives from information technology and knowledge that are the products of human imagination and networks of interaction among people and objects. Such “immaterial wealth” is inherently difficult to value quantitatively or to restrict for proprietary use. As a result, wealth created is realized through mechanisms such as patents or other means to protect intellectual property, with the beneficiaries of that wealth determined by prevailing systems of political economy.