Identité et patrimoine

Abstract

How can one interpret the wish to preserve, more and more extensively, the traces, whatever their form, of societies and cultures that have preceded those existing nowadays ? What signifiance can one give to the unrestrained classification of the culture’s common features as heritage ? Amongst other finalities, what is taken in consideration here is the social investment for constituting personal and collective identities to which individuals want to give more consistency and consolidation, and even entrenchment. To this end, the past is subject to different operations, the purpose of which are to transfonn it into cultural heritage. Classified as such, objects and social practices acquire the qualifying virtue which is sought : they symbolise and mark out. Local communities appropriate and encourage this extensive classification as cultural heritage.