Shifting the Gaze on the Notion of Heritage: Matrimonies, Environmental Heritages, Decolonial Heritages
Plan
Haut de pageCoordination :
Barbara Morovich (AMUP UR 7309, ENSA-Strasbourg, IFRA-Nigéria, barbara.morovich[at]strasbourg.archi.fr)
Géraldine Djament (UMR 7363 SAGE, Université de Strasbourg, djament[at]unistra.fr)
Contact :
Please send your proposal to the four addresses :
RSS Editorial Board <rss[at]misha.fr>,
Barbara Morovich: barbara.morovich[at]strasbourg.archi.fr
Géraldine Djament: djament[at]unistra.fr
The issue will be published second semester of 2026
– Submission of abstracts and keywords in French and English (4,000 characters, including spaces) by March 1, 2025. Abstracts should mention the axis on which the proposal is aligned, the title, the underlying theoretical approach, empirical data, field work and methodology. Abstracts should also include a select bibliography (not included in the 4,000 characters) and a short bio-bibliographical note on the author(s).
– Submission of articles in French or English (40,000 characters, spaces included) before June 20, 2025.
– Authors are requested to comply with the journal’s presentation guidelines:
<https://journals.openedition.org/revss/448>.
All articles will be based on the analysis of original data, ranging from fieldwork to archival studies, and may concern several humanities and social sciences disciplines. An interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach will be highly appreciated. Articles can be multi-voiced, involving not only academics, but also associations, institutions, artists, etc. Articles from contexts other than Europe are strongly encouraged, as are alternative bibliographical sources to the dominant ones.
All anonymized articles will be submitted to a double expertise.
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This issue of the Revue des sciences sociales aims to take a fresh look at the notion of heritage as it was historically constituted in Europe (Babelon Chastel 1980) and subsequently broadened (Choay 1992) or even profoundly reconfigured, supporting the hypothesis that we are entering a new regime of patrimoniality (Gravari-Barbas 2012; Guinand 2015).
Since the end of the twentieth century, there has been a globalized heritage enthusiasm, notably with the creation of the “World Heritage of Humanity” label, in 1972 by Unesco, or since the promotion of intangible cultural heritage, by the 2003 Unesco convention (Bortoletto 2011), a notion conveying a new regime of patrimonialization (Davallon 2012). Based on an interdisciplinary approach, this dossier proposes to shift the focus “beyond the heritage consensus” (Bondaz, Isnart, Leblon 2012) towards “social groups that are invisible or not very visible in this register of legitimization” (Veschambre 2009), towards the plural processes of “minority groups” (Guillaumin 1985), towards “alternative” heritage (Cousin et al. 2015).
The aim is to identify emerging forms of heritage that escape the logic of heritage based on legal standards and guaranteed by specialized institutions, historically constituted in interaction with national constructs, but also that escape the logic of globalization of and by heritage, or “patrimondialization” (Gravari-Barbas 2012; Gravari-Barbas, Jacquot 2024), of heritage staged and commodified by and for globalized tourist flows. Without being limited to this, this dossier will therefore focus on heritage by appropriation (Rautenberg 2000, 2003) or detour. It will seek to capture unstable, fragile and invisible forms, compromises and intermittences of heritage. André Micoud's definition of “patrimonialization” sums up this approach: it's “the name given to the process by which a human collective expresses itself as such through the work of collecting what, from its past, is for it a guarantee of the future” (Micoud 2004: 16).
- 1 See, for example, the current call “Matrimoines. Penser le patrimoine en féministes” from the journ (...)
This call for proposals is in line with current themes in heritage studies1. It proposes to renew our thinking on patrimonialization, the set of processes of collection and valorization by which a social collective extracts an object - in the broadest sense of the term, from normal social life - to grant it the status of an emblem of its identity over time (Micoud, 2005), by approaching other “patrimonial” and/or “matrimonial” conceptions of heritages, non-Western, postcolonial and decolonial, and from other regions of the world. The aim is to highlight, on the one hand, the “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2007) as a structure that remains underlying, despite independence, and on the other, forms of resistance and permanence, for example in food (Matta 2012).
The dossier thus proposes a heuristic decentering: in which way do patrimonial or memorial policies reproduce dominations or call them into question? How does resistance develop? What compromises are reached? What does the exclusion or marginalization of minority groups tell us about heritage? To what extent do alternative heritage processes and/or alternative heritages redefine the very notion of heritage?
Three types of emergence of current burning concern have been identified as laboratories, not exhaustive, of such an approach aiming to go beyond the fixed and unequal dichotomies of men/women, nature/culture, North/South that have accompanied and marked the production of heritage and the very notion of heritage. The question of the “right to heritage” may also be addressed. The specificity of this dossier, which is part of critical heritage studies, is to bring these themes into dialogue in order to reflect on the epistemological and social significance of decentering, in relation to dominant conceptions of heritage.
Authors are asked to submit their proposals in one of the following three areas:
1. Matrimonial decentering
- 2 “Vous avez dit ‘matrimoine’?”, Blog post, Mediapart, November 25, 2017, <https://blogs.mediapart.fr/mouvement-hf/blog/251117/vous-avez-dit-matrimoine-par-aurore-evain>.
As part of her investigation of ethnological collections through the critical prism of subaltern studies, anthropologist Ellen Hertz (2002) has re-actualized, “in an antipatriarchal reflex”, the medieval term “matrimony” referring to property inherited from the mother, with the aim of rethinking our heritage in feminist terms and engendering new patrimonial regimes. More recently, initiatives such as Aurore Evain's2 have revalorized the notions of matrimoine and authoress (2019), particularly in the theatrical field. Associations are also making this theme their own. H/F Ile de France, set up in 2009 to promote gender equality in the cultural sector, is behind matrimoine tours featuring women, as are a growing number of feminist associations. Since 2015, it has been organizing Matrimoine Days alongside the Journées du Patrimoine, with the Mémo association (Mouvement pour l'Equité dans la Maîtrise d'Œuvre), like a growing number of local authorities in their wake in France and beyond. The term “matrimoine” is used to refer to the little-known heritage of women and/or feminists, but it can also be used in a much broader sense to refer to “a territorialized, rooted heritage, which retains its existence value”, but which “also has a use value” (ARP, Gravari-Barbas report quoted). What does matrimony have to do with heritage processes? How do socially committed collectives and groups claiming a feminist approach challenge dominant patriarchal logics? What gestures, what cultural or historical reactivations, what inventions of tradition? What role do artists play in these approaches? How are the legacies of the mother seen, perceived and analyzed in/from other countries, such as Africa (Cousin, 2024), in a globalized and contemporary reading?
2. Environmental decentering
The patrimonialization of “nature” and/or landscape was historically constructed within the framework of the sensible naturalist paradigm (Rodary 2003), in conjunction with processes of artialization (Roger 1997). From the 19th century onwards, this process was closely linked to the patrimonialization of “culture”, and in part under the aegis of the same actors, in order to regulate industrialization and urbanization. In France, for example, laws on the protection of sites have been in force since 1906, then 1930, to protect “natural” and/or urban sites. However, recent trends are reconfiguring the analysis.
- 3 According to the concept proposed by Jacquot, Morelle, Samé Ekobo (2023) and subject of ANR-INFRAPA (...)
On the one hand, the inclusion of “mixed” (natural and cultural) heritages on Unesco's World Heritage List, and the growing interest in the heritage of living (Micoud 2000), call into question “beyond nature and culture” (Descola 2005) the categorization and transmission, as well as the regime of authenticity (Morisset 2009). On the other hand, contemporary environmental concerns, as well as concepts and fields developed by anthropology and political ecology, challenge heritage. Environmental policies interfere or even converge with heritage policies (Melé 2009). Heritage studies are responding to this, for example by analyzing “patrimony in the face of the anthropocene” (Tornatore 2017) or the “capitalocene” (Bonneuil 2017), or by developing the notion of ‘infra- patrimony’3.
Particular attention will be paid to everyday and/or protest experiences (Paddeu 2021) of the heritage of “nature”, plants and gardens in both Western and non-Western cities. This decentralization concerns less a type of heritage than a transversal questioning of the contemporary heritage paradigm.
3. Postcolonial and decolonial decentering
This axis will examine the complexity of heritage and memories of migration, nourished by the journeys and circulations of individuals, objects and restitution processes, as well as the “heritage arenas” (Roth 2003) created by political and/or urban change. The analysis will focus on the elaboration of patrimonializations in conflict or “patrimonial compromises” (Rautenberg 2012; Dedinger et al. 2023), as many ways of making heritage in reaction to race and class assignment, from a critical postcolonial or decolonial perspective. The crossover between migration studies and heritage studies is not new, and corresponds to the interest that social science researchers have taken in the memories and legacies of groups from migrant backgrounds (Baussant et al. 2017). We’d like to shift the focus to other cities and territories, and take as our starting point experiences such as the one that led to the debunking of statues in South Africa and the birth of movements like Rhodes Must Fall. How are the legacies of colonial domination being lived out and patrimonialized today, including through language? The analysis could focus on the burdensome legacies of both former colonized territories and former colonizing territories. What are the “continuities, reconfigurations and ruptures” (Singaravélou 2024) in terms of heritage and patrimonialization? What is the relationship between new forms of heritage and ongoing reconfigurations of memory?
Notes
1 See, for example, the current call “Matrimoines. Penser le patrimoine en féministes” from the journal Nouvelles questions féministes 45/2, 2026, or the current call ”Les invisibles du patrimoine. Quel(s) patrimoine(s) et pour qui?” by the journal In Situ.
2 “Vous avez dit ‘matrimoine’?”, Blog post, Mediapart, November 25, 2017, <https://blogs.mediapart.fr/mouvement-hf/blog/251117/vous-avez-dit-matrimoine-par-aurore-evain>.
3 According to the concept proposed by Jacquot, Morelle, Samé Ekobo (2023) and subject of ANR-INFRAPATRI (coord. E. Guitard), « Savoirs et attachements aux plantes urbaines en Afrique subsaharienne (Bénin, Cameroun, Nigéria, Sénégal) : identification et production d'un patrimoine par le bas » cf. <https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-20-CE27-0011>.
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