Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.

Conserving Culture examines heritage protection in the United States and how it has been implemented in specific cases. Contributors challenge the division of heritage into nature, the built environment, and culture. They describe cultural conservation as an integrated process for resource planning and recommend supplanting the current prescriptive approach with one that is more responsive to grass-roots cultural concerns.

This research is seeking to better understand how cultural landscapes and their [trans]formation are recognized, calling out the differences between definitions of tangible and intangible heritage. Cultural heritage is acknowledged but its ways of expression have been poorly understood and preserved mainly because of the lack of information for safeguarding heritage. However, ethnographic communities have had a stronger understanding of the need for a broader knowledge of cultural heritage and they have been preserving their memory by creating vernacular cultural landscapes. Acts of remembering and forgetting which remain embedded as silent stratifications in cultural landscapes can be seen to shape the world. And these preservation efforts turn our landscapes into palimpsests on which the original writing has been effaced to make space for later writing but of which traces remain. Communities then get caught up between cultures, creating cultural landscapes that are not a container to store experiences but the experiences themselves. Yet, it is important to know the approaches they use to preserve their memory and heritage within those cultural landscapes. Communities choose consciously or unconsciously intangible and tangible expressions. The project will follow four different paths of inquiry: theoretical, hypothetical, referential, and experimental. The first chapter will compare and debate the different cultural heritage definitions and the processes that have been used to safeguard and preserve cultural landscapes among worldwide and national organizations. Followed by the second chapter which will state the hypothesis that the creation of cultural landscapes depends on immigration, the anthropological notion of identity, and the population and time. The third chapter will support the hypothesis with two case studies within Chicago highlighting each way of expression used to preserve their cultural heritage: the Colombian and Mexican communities. Finally, the fourth chapter will explore a pilot study of domestic spaces within those communities as an attempt to make visible the intangible aspect of the process of memory preservation. The last two chapters will be key to understanding the distinction between tangible and intangible as approaches to preserving memory within communities emphasizing the intangibility aspect of specific cultural landscapes. This research will focus on a perceived disconnect in re-educating society to understand and acknowledge the value of intangible cultural heritage. The thesis will present a different way to approach intangibility incorporating social inclusion as an attempt to propose a distinctive framework for the conservation and restoration of communities’ memory.

A Companion to Heritage Studies BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY A Companion to Heritage Studies “This Companion provides a gateway to heritage studies for students and scholars alike. Taken together, the essays testify to how exciting and dynamic this field has become.” Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, University of Iceland “Interdisciplinary and international in scope, A Companion to Heritage Studies succeeds in bringing together critical and practical, historicizing and future-oriented scholarship on what has become an all-pervasive global interest and industry, passion and resource.” Regina F. Bendix, Göttingen University, Germany “A vast and complete overview of the contemporary challenges of heritage preservation and management. This is an important book for practitioners, planners, and policy makers. The Companion fills a gap and helps address many of the uncomfortable questions heritage preservation is facing today.” Francesco Bandarin, Special Advisor to UNESCO for Heritage and Professor, University Iuav of Venice A Companion to Heritage Studies is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey of the interdisciplinary study of cultural heritage. Featuring a substantial framework-setting essay by the editors, and contributions from an international array of scholars, including some with extensive experience in heritage practice through UNESCO, the World Heritage Centre, ICOMOS and national heritage systems, this Companion offers a cutting-edge guide to this emergent and increasingly important field that is global in scope, cross-cultural in focus, and critical in approach. The selected essays have been innovatively organized into three sections on the expansion, use and abuse, and the recasting of heritage. The Companion covers all of the key themes in research, including old and new outlooks on cultural heritage and its management, heritage as a form of cultural politics, the emergence of critical heritage studies, the role of heritage in times of rapid change and conflict, heritage in environmental protection, the rise of intangible heritage, museums and digital heritage, World Heritage and tourism, and heritage ethics and human rights. A Companion to Heritage Studies will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of anthropology, archeology, and cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in better understanding the historical, social, and political significance of heritage.

The integration of science with art is a complex process of analysis and the knowledge and understanding of the need to save and protect works of art as well as preserve and restore cultural heritage. This is generally provoked by the living necessity, profoundly human, to leave our inheritance to new generations, as intact as is possible, the testimonies of the past.The issues approached interfere with artistic criticism, for example, biological and physico-chemical analyses, and intelligent mathematical modeling systems such as Marker-less Augmented Reality, 3D Reconstruction, intelligent combinations of digital image analysis functions to recognize and estimate the possible evolution of color and shape to help experts make the best decisions about authenticating and preserving-restoring art objects.Advanced technical devices such as digital databases and other tools and materials can allow for the eradication of offenses such as false art and falsification.