| Abstract: |
This collaborative Working Paper is the final and re-elaborated product of a
workshop held at the EUI, organised in the framework of a working group on
Cultural Heritage. It is meant as a document of ongoing debate and research
around the theme of landscape, and of a redefinition of the theme itself as an
object of inquiry and policy of which the recent European Landscape Convention
(ELC, Council of Europe, 2000) is at the same time a cause, an effect, and a
symbol. The approach and ambition of this working paper is to draw together
different disciplinary approaches to landscape, conceived as heritage and
therefore connected to the construction and meaning of cultural identities.
Vice versa, the perspective is that of unveiling the consequences for identity
construction of conceiving heritage as landscape. This overall objective has
been articulated in three sections, in which the contributors have both
offered their specific disciplinary expertise, and tried to explore different
approaches. The first part addresses the definition of landscape as heritage
by drawing on both recent theorising and current institutional developments at
the European level. The second part tries to expose the relationship of
identity and landscapes, both constructed and contested, focusing on the
relationship of territory to the collective imagining of communities in
Europe. The third part, the most disciplinary oriented, considers how
landscape became a legal object. Conclusive remarks by one of the fathers of
the ELC stress both the institutional perspective of the COE and the need for
a constant dialogue between disciplines and between academics and policy
makers with regard to landscape. |