Give Meaning to the Cultural Heritage in its Daily Dimension: Humanize the Space to Favor Social Innovation from the Socioinnovative Dispositions
Maite Jiménez Peralta*
Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile
Submission: May 21, 2019; Published: May 30, 2019;
*Corresponding author: Maite Jiménez Peralta, Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Waddington 716, Pya. Wide Valparaiso, Chile
How to cite this article: Maite Jiménez Peralta. Give Meaning to the Cultural Heritage in its Daily Dimension: Humanize the Space to Favor Social Innovation from the Socioinnovative Dispositions. Glob J Arch & Anthropol. 2019; 9(4): 555769. DOI: 10.19080/GJAA.2019.09.555769
Abstract
Urban development creates spaces in the city that are marginalized. By validating itself as a self-fulfilling prophecy, it generates a social fabric that is invulnerable to social innovation and favorable conditions are established for micro-trafficking and crime to flourish. It is possible to improve the social capital of the members of a community, thanks to the integration of the community around the traditional values that sustain it. The tourism industry offers itself as an interesting prospect, since the opportunity to rescue the forgotten history of these places has proven to be an engine of development in different parts of the planet, articulating a network of possibilities as it returns these places to the map, making them visible and pressing for local governments to derive resources from it. The patrimony thus becomes a double-edged sword, because that which rescues history also loses it for the inhabitants themselves. Reversing these processes means reconnecting the subject with its territory and allowing that from the sharing of their interests on the place, they can organize a social substrate able to manage the opportunities and the resolution of their social problems. Thus activating a social innovation from the socio-innovative dispositions of its inhabitant, requires humanizing the sense of space and how a given community is capable of sustaining an urban identity. For there to be a sustainable cultural heritage, it is necessary for the resident community to be able to actively link with it, because not to do so is to make it a sterile, artificial and packaged object for a tourist, but lacking an identity
Keywords: Social innovation; Rehumanization; Heritage; Public space; Tourism
Introduction
Urban development creates spaces in the city that are marginalized [1], where the inhabitants build a story, which in its continuous mention of precariousness, give priority to a narrative of failures that finally configures conditions to justify the abandonment of the territory. The other (the neighbor) is seen as a threatening subject and the families reduce their participation in spaces of community interaction, further weakening social structures. It is possible to improve the social capital of the members of a community, understood as the set of resources rooted within their network of social relationships, plus all the resources accessible through that same network [2], thanks to the integration of the community around the traditional values that sustain it. For this to happen, it is necessary to understand space as a text from which each subject is constituted in relation to another [3]. Being a community becomes an exercise in alterity and it is in the repetition of their story that each subject becomes part of a community [4]. In addition, from the performative power that it offers, it allows to find transformation possibilities for the subject and for the territory. A new story, in dialogue with another and with its history, is creating an affective ecology that positions the interlocutors from new possibilities [5].
Heritage as a Frozen Story
In these areas, the challenge of generating better economic opportunities for its inhabitants, is of interest to the authorities and the tourism industry is offered as an interesting perspective, since the opportunity to rescue the forgotten history of these places has proven to be an engine of development in different parts of the planet. Cultural, patrimonial or community tourism allows forgotten places to be placed on the map [6]. To this increase of tourists, there is associated a revitalization of the places generating a creative economy [7]. The tourist is an avid buyer for new products in different formats: walks, lodging, experiences, memories, food, etc. Rescuing this heritage, whether in its buildings as material heritage or in its traditions as intangible heritage, is articulating a network of possibilities for a place, as it returns them to the map, making them visible and pressing for local governments to derive resources from it. Heritage thus becomes a double-edged sword, as that which rescues history, and place, freezing both at a point of time. In addition to being put in common and at the service of tourism, as is the case of a world heritage site, it is lost for the inhabitants, who are questioned by the tourists themselves to remain faithful to it [8].
The dilemma for the use of Space
The space in spite of being common stops being public, since its use on the part of the community that inhabits it is restricted and regulated by the requirements of the patrimony. Real estate speculation and policies to safeguard heritage, bring the phenomenon of gentrification hand in hand, leaving the neighbor without the possibility of intervening in their daily spaces. The social space constructed in function of an economic capital and a cultural capital, is excluding the own neighbors who are marginalized in the negotiation of the interests on the territory. To integrate them, they must have access to both types of capital and the mechanism is social innovation. This to be effective in these places, should be understood as a process and not as a result, and means anchoring urban development with a more social sense and inspired by community policies [9]. From the urban space, the community needs to create and find common places to socialize, from the meaning that each subject contributes to that cultural construction [10]. In this way, a shared identity allows affectively linking the subjects with their territory [11] and not only from the assignment of a patrimonial category. The neighbor is perceived to be subject from a history to a particular community integrating it towards an urban social identity, which expresses the relationship between the environmental past, the socially elaborated meanings related to space, and the particular way in which the subject has integrated them, cognitive and affectively, in the way in which it establishes its links [12,13].
The Socio-Innovative Dispositions
For this reason, it is not possible to think about economic growth from heritage tourism, without thinking about the human as an essential capital [14,15]. Only with the active participation of community actors, it becomes possible to reconsider critical social problems as opportunities [16]. The dilemma lies in how to reconcile the need for a social innovation that allows a place to be economically stimulated and at the same time maintain this state of immobility of its heritage. If we add to this a scenario where precariousness and marginalization have broken their community ties, conditions favor more a gentrification than an improvement in the quality of life of its inhabitants. Examples of the latter are in various parts of the globe, such as Chueca in Madrid, Malmö in Switzerland or San Telmo in Argentina. The arrival of groups with better income, hand in hand with real estate speculation are evicting the original inhabitants. When this occurs in sectors where citizen participation has been systematically invalidated, the restriction on access to what they consider their own territory predisposes to abandonment, whether in a physical (emigration) or emotional (detachment) sense. There is a “gentrification without expulsion” [1]. It often happens that these spaces, in their dimension of heritage tourism, end up being a theatrical scenario of a frozen history splitting from the daily life of its inhabitants [17,18] and these distancing themselves from citizen participation.
For this reason, reconnecting the territory, especially with public space, is also a way to recreate the social fabric that sustains a place. It is in its public nature where neighbors can share and generate strategies to become part of the neighborhoods and establish community alliance networks [19].Working towards social innovation is also working on patterns of social behavior, routines, practices and values that are socially accepted and widely spread throughout the community. It requires recognizing an “other” as also an inhabitant of the neighborhood and as such, recreating the history of a place to conform a cultural identity [20]. The substrate for this is to explore the socio-innovative conditions remaining in a community that has often lost hope and where the neighbor is seen as threatening. These are interpreted as “dispositions or potentialities of the subjects in their interpersonal relationships that, together with the possibilities that the community itself and the place they inhabit, allow generating attitudes and transforming and sustainable actions, in order to empower the participants of a community. These conditions, understood in a framework of eco-development, are the foundation to build contexts of relevance that generate sustainable community projects aimed at the quality of intra and inter-family life” [21,22].
Conclusion
The identification of patrimonial spaces has been seen as an interesting resource to reactivate disadvantaged areas. Many times, this process, far from bringing wealth to its inhabitants, evicts them, allowing the arrival of new residents. In Latin America, this eviction has not always been physical, but often the effect is that the original residents are relegated in access to public spaces, which are occupied by tourists who create an itinerant population in the place or new residents, promoters of tourism-oriented businesses (restaurants, tourism agencies, accommodation, etc.). San Pedro de Atacama in Chile is an example of this. Thus the promise of an improvement in the quality of life is being diluted because the different interests on the territory are being negotiated by different agents than the natural residents. These, in turn, are marginalized from citizen participation, perceiving themselves as alien to their neighborhoods, streets and squares isolating themselves.
Reversing these processes means reconnecting the subject with its territory and allowing that from the sharing of their interests on the place, they can organize a social substrate able to manage the opportunities and the resolution of their social problems. Thus activating a social innovation from the socioinnovative dispositions of its inhabitant, requires humanizing the sense of space and how a given community is capable of sustaining an urban identity. For there to be a sustainable cultural heritage, it is necessary that the resident community can actively link with this because not to do so, is to make it a sterile, artificial and packaged object for a tourist, but lacking an identity.
Acknowledgements
I want to express my acknowledgements to my colleagues Dr. Gladys Jiménez, Dr. Gonzalo Bravo and MSc Jacqueline Reveco, who have worked in the La Matriz neighborhood.