Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance

This book is about the entanglement of heritage and resistance in different situations of conflicts, and the opportunities this entanglement may provide for social justice. This entanglement is investigated in the different contributions through theoretical and empirical analyses of heritage-led resistance to neoliberal economic development, violation of the subaltern, authorised narratives and state-invented traditions, colonialism and settler colonialism, and even dominating discourses of social movement, to name just a few. Crossing the disciplinary boundaries of heritage and resistance studies, these analyses brought new insights into several timely debates, especially those concerned about the interrelated critical questions of displacement, gentrification, exclusion, marginalization, urbicide, spatial cleansing, dehumanization, alienation, ethnic cleansing, social injustice. Following our purposeful and future-driven approach, we wish to bring new energy to the field of heritage studies through the focus on the potential of heritage and resistance for a hopeful change rather than adding to the fields’ yet a new overwhelming engagement with conflict and war.