Results paper in PH journal (2020)

Title: Heritage-Social Innovation Ecosystems. Definition and study cases.

Author: Fernández Fernández, Jesús. In Journal PH, 99, 2020, 64-97

Abstract: In the last decades, social innovation has become an emergent concept placed in the agendas of public policies and social agents. However, in cultural heritage studies it has not been discussed and analyzed extensively enough. This paper presents a proposal to contextualize, problematize, and understand links between social innovation and cultural heritage through the analysis of three study cases. Using quantitative-qualitative methods of observation, we analyzed the strategies and actions that distinct groups and communities have implemented around certain heritage elements or vectors, and that have served them to meet their social needs. We also discuss the implications of these processes at the political and academic sphere. These self-organized communities have been able to create different interfaces called “ecosystems”, in which citizens play a key role simultaneously with diverse social and institutional actors in activating, guarding, defending, or managing some kind of cultural heritage. Seen from this perspective, these actions, which we could call “alterpatrimonial”, are relocated, bringing it to the center of the academic discussion from the outskirts of the usual reflection framework of the authorized discourses. We show these processes full potential with extensive know-how of scientific, social, and political interest, that can connect some collective heritage with the major challenges of our time and implementing more democratic, plural, sustainable, and fair communities. Open and transferable social innovations, from which other organizations as communities, institutions, and universities can extract learning and reflection on cultural and heritage practices.

Link: https://www.iaph.es/revistaph/index.php/revistaph/article/view/4286