Kulturmiljö och -arv i regionala strategiska handlingar – Kulturmiljövården i en samhällelig kontext

Abstract

The following essay aims to examine how cultural heritage is used in regional strategic documents and to put that result in a societal context, both concerning past and present paradigms in the cultural heritage sector. Firstly, a literature study was done in order to give a background to the cultural heritage sector’s past fifty years, in terms of shifting paradigms, political incitements etc. The outline thereof is the fact that the cultural heritage field has shifted both focus and scope over the last half century. New demands on the sector is held in terms of being a part of the overall regional development work with democratic claims, comprehensive view and not least economic growth as a contemporary norm. Secondly, regional strategic documents were examined to identify relevant ones for the heritage field. The strategic documents of Sweden’s 21 regions were surveyed and three regional case studies were chosen. A content analysis was then applied for the documents of the case studies and an analysis scheme based on the procedure of Grounded theory was made. The result is that two out of the three examined regions holds a very much outgoing approach when discussing cultural heritage. The focus is held on an instrumental use of cultural heritage in order to provide growth and to bring places attractiveness. The third region talks about cultural heritage primary in terms of identity. Both aspects of providing the region with identity by cultural heritage and a heritage developing for its own sake. Lastly, four qualitative interviews were performed with professionals within the cultural heritage field in the three examined regions. The interviewed persons confirmed the overall vagueness of the strategic documents, which makes them unused in the work of the consulted. The interviews also confirmed the ideological shift which is happening in the sector at present. The conclusion of this thesis is that the comparatively new concept of growth is still difficult to use and to unite the cooperative sectors in regional strategic work. Furthermore it seems to be an institutional inertia between national and regional aims on the one hand, and the cultural heritage practice on the other.