Paper short abstract:

The subject of the presentation is multiplicity of heritage practices in the region of Polish Spisz. The findings contribute to the development of new forms of collaboration and cooperation between various heritage actors which also means new forms of heritage management.

Paper long abstract:

The subject of the presentation is heritage as social process in the region of Polish Spisz connected, to a large extent, with the political system changes over the past twenty years. Spisz is a southern borderland area with a heterogeneous national identity, with the diversity of heritage actors, including anthropologists who often impose normative understandings of heritage. Cultural change is in fact happening, and its dynamism seems to be stimulated by a bipolar frame of dispute that can be observed in at least three cultural fields: Polishness and Slovakness, globalisation and the revitalisation of localness, minority local cultural activists /anthropologists and the views of the majority of inhabitants. A special role in heritage discourse is played by aesthetics - adaptations of cultural foreign forms, musealisation of traditional forms and the latest non-traditional work that draws on regional mythology. The period under discussion is characterised by new phenomena in globalisation, glocalisation, heterogenisation, syncretisation, new traditionalisms and diasporic forms of life or medialisation, which are the product of relatively intense changes taking place in the cultural space. The findings open up new analytical and methodological spaces for researching multiplicity in heritage practice in contemporary regional/local identity politics, as well as may contribute to develop forms of collaboration and cooperation between various heritage actors which means new forms of heritage management.