Paper short abstract:

Cultural heritage has continually been employed as a strategic resource in EU external relations, and to foster cohesion between member states and pre-accession countries. The paper asks how, as part of such processes, entanglements with other and conflicting heritages are negotiated and positioned.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural heritage has continually been employed as a strategic resource in EU external relations and to foster cohesion between member states and pre-accession countries. In these contexts, authorised and hegemonic versions of European and national heritage have been favoured for the purpose of “culture as soft power.” While diversity has been an integral part of European heritage conceptions, it is limited in scope and scale, and entails exclusions against perceived foreign or peripheral aspects. As participation and community involvement gain more prominent roles in current heritage developments (e.g., in UNESCO’s ICH and the Council of Europe’s Faro convention), entanglements with other, non-European conceptualisations of heritage and marginalised or hybrid elements of heritage become more important. The paper asks how, as part of such processes, entanglements with other and conflicting heritages are negotiated and positioned as part of EU external relations. It examines how EU institutions aim to integrate dissonant heritages and linkages to non-European aspects of cultural heritage into authorised forms of heritage. The paper’s goal is twofold. First, it shows how a broader notion of heritage which includes, e.g., migratory movements and transnational relations as heritage, is introduced as part of current, official EU heritage programmes. Second, it analyses the conceptual challenges for heritage diplomacy caused by this shift towards the inclusion of entanglements.