Vision Document. Negotiating Heritage Rights
Jasper Chalcraft
Heritage rights carry with them many of the ambiguities of human rights. A core difficulty is that in practice they have tended to affirm rights based on ethnos rather than demos, and academics are not clear whether they represent a possibility or a challenge for more cohesive, diverse and reflective European societies. Despite these difficulties, heritage rights are something Europe will need to continually deal with in pragmatic ways, as these constructs of the past already shape how European identities are being made in the present. Exploring how institutions can support human rights of access to and participation in the culture of the demos may be crucial here.
