Paper short abstract:

The objective of this study is to analyze the Romanian “patrimonial productions” put in perspective alongside with the discourse and practices of different actors in order to identify interferences, tensions and conflicts of representation among them.

Paper long abstract:

This study has a three-fold purpose: first, it aims at identifying the criteria promoted by the official cultural policy makers according to which a "good" could get "patrimonial value" and enter the sphere of national "cultural heritage". Second, it aims at examining the vocabulary as well as the representations of professional institutional actors in charge to implement the criteria that were institutionally established, such as museum experts trained in cultural mediation; third, it aims at analyzing the "heteroglossia" of "indigenous heritagization", typical of private family museums/domestic museums belonging to individual actors which undertake an individual construction of "patrimonial good". The reflexive approach relates to the realm of "heritagized goods", the status of the actors engaged in heritagization, the various discourses on cultural heritage, the reference to the principles and criteria according to which one assesses "patrimonial value" of a specific "good". By taking into account interferences, tensions and conflicts of representation among different actors, related to "goods that are to be heritagized", this study proposes an analysis of the forms whereby identities are institutionalised in parallel with the individual's growing decision power within his own construction. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the "multivocality" of the term "heritage" in the Romanian cultural sphere through the lens of its perception. The analysis of "patrimonial value" for the aforementioned actors may reveal completely new understandings and constructions of heritage, and it may lead to the identification of processes meant to reconfigure the status of "patrimonial goods".