Paper short abstract:

The paper shows the use of maps to visualise changes of the heritage regime of the city of Lviv through decades of post-socialist urban change. Woven together with an ethnography of heritage institutions, mapping directs the attention in a way that is highly productive for ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Heritage regimes are often interrogated through the interpretations they develop around certain periods and styles. Major socio-political changes like the dissolution of the USSR bring about changes in memory politics. This is especially true in highly contested borderland cities like Lviv in Western Ukraine, that had been symbolically privileged locations for previous regimes. In the paper I bring together an ethnography of the changing institutional landscape of conservation from the beginning of Soviet Lviv through 1991 to today with mapping ownership, protection types and the distribution of key actors. I argue that GIS is a crucial addition to urban ethnography that helps to overcome the dichotomy of informants' versus ethnographers' perspectives, as they are produced at the intersection of these, but independent of both. Mapping the changes in the heritage regime helps to identify the blind spots of ethnographic attention, as well as informants' understanding, a perspective otherwise inaccessible with the tools of conventional ethnography.