The Heritage Machine
Fetishism and Domination in Maragateria, Spain
Pablo Alonso Gonzalez(Author)
Pluto Press
Published on 20. December 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-7453-3806-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book upturns the conventional understanding of heritage, challenging widespread notions about how we relate to and why we preserve the past.
Heritage research is often based on the assumption that heritage is something `given' to us, that is good and valuable in its own right. However, by looking at the historical and cultural roots of heritage and its development through the Enlightenment, modernity and capitalism, Pablo Alonso Gonzalez shows that it is in fact a system pervaded by fetishistic social relationships, embedded in capitalism, and not as benign as it appears.
Focusing on a case study in in the region of Maragateria, Spain, Alonso Gonzalez explores the ethnic and racial discrimination towards the local population in the context of Spanish nationalism, and how this formed the region's heritage today. By challenging mainstream existing scholarship in the field, The Heritage Machine rethinks the relations between heritage studies and converging disciplines, from anthropology to cultural and memory studies.
Heritage research is often based on the assumption that heritage is something `given' to us, that is good and valuable in its own right. However, by looking at the historical and cultural roots of heritage and its development through the Enlightenment, modernity and capitalism, Pablo Alonso Gonzalez shows that it is in fact a system pervaded by fetishistic social relationships, embedded in capitalism, and not as benign as it appears.
Focusing on a case study in in the region of Maragateria, Spain, Alonso Gonzalez explores the ethnic and racial discrimination towards the local population in the context of Spanish nationalism, and how this formed the region's heritage today. By challenging mainstream existing scholarship in the field, The Heritage Machine rethinks the relations between heritage studies and converging disciplines, from anthropology to cultural and memory studies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7453-3806-4 (9780745338064)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Pablo Alonso Gonzalez is Tenure Track Researcher in Cultural Anthropology at the Higher Research Council of Spain (CSIC). He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Leon in Spain and a Ph.D. in archaeology and heritage studies from the University of Cambridge. His research addresses heritage as a political reality at the intersection between society and material culture from the past. He is the author of The Heritage Machine (Pluto, 2018) and Cuban Cultural Heritage (University Press of Florida, 2018).
Content
Introduction
1. The Emergence of Heritage: a Machine of Domination and Fetishist Relationality
2. Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Spain: the Construction of the Maragato Difference
3. From Difference to Otheness: the Construction of the Rural Peasant as a Subaltern in Maragateria
4. Between Social Immanence and Heritage Abstraction: the Pre-Heritage Relationality of Juntas Vecinales and tamboriteros
5. From Real to Metacultural Struggles: the Teleno Military Shooting Range and the Social Construction of Heritage
6. Critique of Heritage Epistemology: the Social Construction of Heritage and Pseudoarchaeology
7. The Return to the Rural in Prada de la Sierra: from Productive Inheritance to Abstract Heritage
8. The Heritage Machine: from Communal Production to the Appropriation of the Commons in Val de San Lorenzo
9. The Spectacle of the Other and the Negation of Heritage
1. The Emergence of Heritage: a Machine of Domination and Fetishist Relationality
2. Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Spain: the Construction of the Maragato Difference
3. From Difference to Otheness: the Construction of the Rural Peasant as a Subaltern in Maragateria
4. Between Social Immanence and Heritage Abstraction: the Pre-Heritage Relationality of Juntas Vecinales and tamboriteros
5. From Real to Metacultural Struggles: the Teleno Military Shooting Range and the Social Construction of Heritage
6. Critique of Heritage Epistemology: the Social Construction of Heritage and Pseudoarchaeology
7. The Return to the Rural in Prada de la Sierra: from Productive Inheritance to Abstract Heritage
8. The Heritage Machine: from Communal Production to the Appropriation of the Commons in Val de San Lorenzo
9. The Spectacle of the Other and the Negation of Heritage