The links between society and heritage are identified as central to the debate on human inheritance, both tangible and intangible. Today the concept of heritage depends on almost any sort of intergenerational exchange or relationship, welcome or not, between societies as well as individuals (4th Heritage Forum of Central Europe: Heritage and Society 1-3 June 2017, Kraków, Poland – reprinted in CAMBRIDGE HERITAGE RESEARCH GROUP BULLETIN – 7 November 2016). People are “the creators of heritage”. Heritage studies today show a growing tendency to think of the field predominantly in terms of identity. This process appears to be particularly relevant to Central Europe and its experience, both unique and universal: of shifting borders, migrations and forced resettlements, of war and the Holocaust. Such events have prompted the development of a new stance on heritage as well as the recognition of new categories of heritage such as stateless heritage, dissonant heritage and the heritage of atrocity. Thus heritage today has become an amalgam of cultural, political and economic aspects of contemporary society with various subtexts of art and architecture, history and literature, economy and sociology, politics and management etc.

Paul Rappoport – Heritage 21 – 13 November 2016