Schools, cities and their heritage: School dynamics of cultural patrimonialisation

Abstract

Many interdisciplinary studies approaching the relationship between heritage and social memory have shown a decentralisation of processes of cultural patrimonialisation, whose pivot moves away from the State, as a privileged actor in selecting and preserving what is agreed upon as heritage, and towards communities and social actors as demandants of policies for heritage and patrimonial education. In this sense, the context of political re-democratisation in Brazil was amenable to redefining the role of the Institute of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage, the Iphan (earlier Sphan), evincing changes in correlations of force between government actors and social agents, from which historically absent or silenced collectivities have found new political conditions and renewed experiences to fight for citizenship and social justice. Considering the transformations working in such conceptions of heritage and its influence on policies and practices of patrimonial education in the country, on one hand, this paper aims to problematise the several dimensions that at present interfere with the processes of cultural patrimonialisation and, on the other hand, to reflect upon the condition of the school as an active agent in the processes of preserving memories and local and regional cultures. It concludes with the statement that schooling today is coerced by the new configurations of the heritage field and by dilemmas of a democratic society at cost of earlier years, when it was produced by principles of homogenisation and national unity.