Anthropology of the Urban, EPF Lausanne

Dr. Florence Graezer Bideau, Heritage, Anthropology and Technologies Research Group

This lecture aims to introduce heritage from a social sciences perspective and discuss its main political, social, economic, and cultural issues. First, it presents the tangible and intangible cultural heritage apparatus (UNESCO, ICOMOS) and governance (Conventions, Charts) to explain the uses of heritage practices at international and national scales. Second, the analysis will focus on the first inventory of Living Traditions in Switzerland in 2012 to illustrate the making of heritage in a federalist system, which considers the balance between minorities and majorities. The lecture will end with a critical reflection on the role of experts contributing to identifying intangible culture in built heritage practices and the difficulty of less recognized, visible, undesirable communities raising their voices to be acknowledged as part of the Swiss inventory