Contextualized Cultural Heritage Management: Reflexions on your Possibilities Beyond Tourism

Abstract

It is common domain that the institutional processes of intervention on archaeological heritage, in developing countries, have their main impulse in tourism. This situation is not only motivated by public or private managers who presume the multiple benefits, mainly economic, that this would produce where it arises, but is also part of the imaginary of the common citizen. From this perspective, a large part of the initiatives orient their different actions towards the development of the so-called enhancement, structured towards tourist consumption, and, in a subordinate way, towards a more or less standard patrimonialization process. Which directs its main efforts towards the qualification and management of cultural heritage thinking about the needs and sensitivities of tourism, forgetting or subordinating the needs and interests of people who cohabit or are in adjacent territories. From these reflections, we will focus on conducting a historical analysis of the role assigned to heritage in the policies, actions and speeches. To then explore the possibilities that a contextualized cultural heritage management perspective can offer, centered on the inclusion of the inhabitant of the environment for the exercise of their cultural and recreational rights.