Recycling heritage: on a Catalan-Spanish process

Abstract

Drawing on the definition of heritage as a process (Ashworth 1997, 2008) and on the understanding of heritage as the result of a Bourdieuian field of heritage production (Di Giovine, 2009) this paper proposes to review heritage-making processes according to Bourdieu’s model of the field of cultural production with the purpose of improving our knowledge of the processes involved in making, transforming and recycling heritage. Then, using this model an analysis will be made of the case-study of the Catalan-Spanish monasteries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This paper questions whether if in order to recycle and achieve a sustainable model of heritage it is necessary to substitute the preservation paradigm currently imposed for a creative paradigm in which heritage should be constantly reinvented according to the changing needs of the present.