Comment s'inventent de nouveaux patrimoines : usages sociaux, pratiques institutionnelles et politiques publiques en Savoie

Abstract

Relying on the example of the set-up of three cultural tourism operations in the Savoy region, the author shows how heritage-building is constructed by putting agents from the State, from the professional cultural héritage field, from municipalities, and local users of the sites intoplay. It seems that the State's kingly intervention, backed up by the 'knowing' discourse of the professionals, contributes to a 'hardening' of the heritage-building process by cutting local buildings off from their normal uses and reinterpreting them as signs of universal cultural values. Inversely, local residents recognize those sites and objects of their heritage that are near and dear to them by inscribing them within a logic ofuse, which clashes with the institutional heritage-building process. According to each case, regional elected officials will tend to rely on either the first or the second meaning of heritage-building.