Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Heritage Turn in Rural Milieu: Using Heritage Preservation to Sustain the Local in a Globalized World

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

Globalizing forces have impacted people living in rural areas all over the world. In industrialized nations, the decline of extractive industries and small-scale agriculture has caused the devitalization of rural life, places, and identities. Different efforts have emerged attempting to palliate this trend and retain the meaningfulness of local life for rural residents not only in economic terms but also in cultural terms. One approach has been to use or reinvent local heritage in a place-making endeavor. Projects involving heritage-making and heritage preservation range from labeling exceptional sites as "world heritage," as some UNESCO programs have done. Other efforts have sought to promotion everyday vernacular landscapes in a grass-root effort to keep them on the map as living places where people can make a durable livelihood. This doctoral dissertation research project seeks to understand what happens in rural areas when local places turn to heritage-making as a way of confronting globalization. The doctoral student will examine a French model, because France long has displayed an interest in local heritage and pondered its significance, whether this heritage is seen as exceptional or ordinary, tangible or intangible. The student will explore communities in rural France that have responded to the socioeconomic pressures of globalization by using the concept of cultural heritage as a tool of territorial development by seeking membership in the Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of France. The objectives of this research project are to unravel the process of local place-making occurring through heritage-making; contribute to an understanding of the social, cultural and personal processes through which people come to value the past for practical ends; unveil the kind of places and identities that result; and document the ways heritage places and patrimonialized landscapes are viewed and lived-in by the actors involved and the people embedded in them. The student will use qualitative analysis and case-studies to identify the social and political processes through which rural landscapes become heritage, the motivations and expectations of the actors, the effect of heritage-based economic development strategies on rural restructuring and landscape evolution, and how preservation impulses face sustainable development challenges in the 21st century. She will use cartographic, land use and cadastral archival research, and unstructured interviews with local residents and officials to examine how heritage places are lived-in, how they sustain local identities and memories, and how the relationship are shaped between residents within the place and between residents and the place. This project will examine what is not readily visible in the heritage landscape. Landscape is viewed as lived-in places that evolve over time and where past, present, and future intertwine in a politics of local territorial development. Project results will contribute to debates challenging local communities and policy-makers. Those debates include the radical transformation of the peasant world and its effect on rural livelihoods as well as what it means to consider oneself a rural resident; the tension between local and global perspectives in a time of cultural and economic anxiety; and the articulation between preservationist policies that shift living culture into static, museum-like conditions, and the exigencies of dynamic local development. The products of this project will serve local communities and help them understand the stakes of heritage-based development policies. They also will inform applied geography ventures, such as planning and development projects, and they will enlighten local and state policy making in nations where similar associations are in place as well as in other nations that are considering the model as a viable solution to their difficulties. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.