Landscapes of Difficult Heritage

This book studies how people negotiate difficult heritage within their everyday lives, focusing on memory, belonging, and identity. The starting point for the examination is that temporalities lie at the core of understanding this negotiation and that the connection between temporalities and difficult heritage remains poorly understood and theorized in previous research. In order to fully explore the temporalities of difficult heritage, the book investigates places in which the incident of violence originated within different time periods. It examines one example of modern violence (Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina), one example of where the associated incident occurred during medieval times (the Gazimestan monument in Kosovo), and one example of prehistoric violence (Sandby borg in Sweden). The book presents new theoretical perspectives andprovides suggestions for developing sites of difficult heritage, and will thus be relevant for academic researchers, students, and heritage professionals.

Investigates how violence does not only disrupt old, as well as conjure new, identities and identity relations, but can also fundamentally alter the landscape physically and conceptually Utilises case studies in which the incident of violence originated within different time periods, from modern to pre-historic Seeks to recognise the value and potential in heritage as an empowering tool to envision a different future

Autorentext

Gustav Wollentz defended his PhD in the summer of 2018 at the Graduate School of Human Development in Landscapes, Kiel University, Germany. He received his Bachelor's and his Master's degrees in Archaeology from Linnaeus University in Sweden. In 2018 and in 2019, he was hired within the AHRC-funded Heritage Futures research programme to co-author a chapter on "toxic heritage." He is currently working as a project leader / researcher at the Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity, in Östersund, Sweden.

Klappentext

This book studies how people negotiate difficult heritage within their everyday lives, focusing on memory, belonging, and identity. The starting point for the examination is that temporalities lie at the core of understanding this negotiation and that the connection between temporalities and difficult heritage remains poorly understood and theorized in previous research. In order to fully explore the temporalities of difficult heritage, the book investigates places in which the incident of violence originated within different time periods. It examines one example of modern violence (Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina), one example of where the associated incident occurred during medieval times (the Gazimestan monument in Kosovo), and one example of prehistoric violence (Sandby borg in Sweden). The book presents new theoretical perspectives andprovides suggestions for developing sites of difficult heritage, and will thus be relevant for academic researchers, students, and heritage professionals.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Heritage, violence and temporalities.- 3. Memories, landscapes and the production of narratives.- 4. The temporalities of belonging.- 5. Remembering and forgetting in Mostar.- 6. Places of reclaiming continuity.- 7. The burden of the past.- 8. The temporalities of Gazimestan.- 9. Negated spaces and strategies of irrelevance.- 10. Prehistoric violence as difficult heritage.- 11. A place of avoidance and belonging.- 12. Concluding Discussion.