National Peripheries and Cultural Heritage: Community Building on the European margins

Abstract

This paper examines different heritagization processes in peripheral areas of Southern (the Portuguese-Spanish border in the Lower Guadiana Basin) and Central (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland) Europe, while defining the peripherality of these borderland regions from a geographic as well as a socio-economic perspective. We pay particular attention to community building initiatives involving heritage mobilization, i.e., the participation of local communities in activities related to heritage enhancement, the participatory strategies, and the actors in these social processes. Despite the differences in the historical development of the countries selected, their peripheries face similar processes while generating different responses to those issues. Through the description of selected, locally based cases, the paper explores the varieties and the specifics of heritagization in peripheral regions (such as the role of in/stability of the borders, issues around the adaptability/resilience of local communities and sustainable growth strategies as well as the balance of local/global aspects in heritagization). Finally, the description and interpretation of the cases brings up new questions and addresses new issues which can be analysed and developed in further research (e.g., the role of the boundaries, communication/cooperation in cross-border communities, the differentiation of heritagization, etc.).