Valeria Siniscalchi

Reflecting on heritage and power: dynamics, strategies and appropriations in the Catalan Pyrenees and the French Alps

Abstract In this article we will explore the way in which different agents appropriate and use heritage to compete in specific power scenarios. We approach heritage discourses and practices as defining specific political arenas within which power relations are reconfigured. The protection of spaces and places as well as the processes of patrimonialisation that take place inside specific localities give rise to the emergence of new ways of exercising power. We will examine two ethnographic cases from South European mountain areas: the Parc National des Écrins in the French Alps and a Romanesque church in the Catalan Pyrenees. An analysis of both the protected area and the constructed heritage will enable us to focus on heritage as being produced, identified and valued within specific logics and value systems. We examine the dynamics that heritage and heritage policies produce in each context as well as the interest they promote. Heritage both organises different fields of forces and is appropriated by politicians, experts, and economic actors. We will discuss the entanglements, forces and dynamics that are activated and played out as a result of heritage processes in the larger process of contemporary political transformations.

Towards an Economic Anthropology of Europe

The first edition of this unique Handbook was praised for its substantial and invaluable summary discussions of work by anthropologists on economic processes and issues, on the relationship between economic and non-economic areas of life and on the conceptual orientations that are important among economic anthropologists. This thoroughly revised edition brings those discussions up to date, and includes an important new section exploring ways that leading anthropologists have approached the current economic crisis. Its scope and accessibility make it useful both to those who are interested in a particular topic and to those who want to see the breadth and fruitfulness of an anthropological study of economy.

I processi di tipicizzazione tra singolarità e ripetizione

I processi di tipicizzazione tra singolarita e ripetizione Valeria Siniscalchi In questo scritto l’autore rilegge i fenomeni di tipicizzazione di prodotti, pratiche e luoghi attraverso alcuni elementi costitutivi: la singolarita, l’autenticita e la ripetizione nel tempo. Un’attenzione particolare e rivolta alle produzioni alimentari. I prodotti tipici sono oggetto e risultato di conflitti, di negoziazioni, di rapporti di forza e di giochi di potere, spesso occultati o invisibili nei lavori sulla tipicita. L’autore mostra come essi siano, invece, centrali per l’analisi di simili processi.