Subversion and Submission: Who Really Controls Urban Heritage?

The seventh panel from the international conference "Togetherness, Solidarity, Relational Knowledge. Towards a Convivial Anthropology" celebrating the 90th anniversary of ethnology and anthropology at the University of Warsaw, June 9-11, 2025.

Presenting are: Michael Herzfeld, Helena Patzer, Jaro Stacul

Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted in several European and Southeast Asian venues, the panel members discuss the processes through which nation-states place objects and people in and outside the category of 'heritage'. They explore the ways in which various kinds of agency negotiate the meanings of heritage through rhetoric and other practices both shared and contested by nation-state authorities and local communities. In these processes, idealized notions of community are both contested and modified by those who are 'evicted from history' or refuse to be associated with hegemonic narratives.