Patrimonialisation

The article offers a historical and epistemological review of the word "patrimonialisation" as a paradigm, and an assessment of the evolution of theories, studies and practices proposed under this heading over the last thirty years, specially in French. Defining patrimonialisation as a process characterized by an object and situated in a temporal context, the article concludes with some considerations on the parallel evolution of heritage studies published in English, particularly in the context of critical heritage studies and the authorized heritage discourse paradigm, and evokes the cultural and scientific stakes of these contemporary epistemological trends.