Is patrimoine ‘good to think with’?

Abstract

To engage with patrimoine, I draw on the 2017 American Institute of Maghrib Studies-sponsored conference entitled ‘Historic Preservation in North Africa/La préservation historique en Afrique du Nord: Symposium international AIMS’ co-organised by Susan Slyomovics and Diana Wylie, an anthropologist and historian. A group of architects, historians, anthropologists, heritage practitioners and workers from across the Maghreb convened in Oran, Algeria from May 12 to 14, 2017. Articles emerging from this conference appear under rubrics that seek to engage with transcultural meanings of patrimoine, turath and ‘heritage’, while analysing the afterlives of colonialism in the Maghreb and investigating selected practices of historic preservation.