When cultural values get in the way : An ethnological study of cultural heritage constructions in a municipal organisation

This master thesis is about cultural heritage constructions in municipal processes. It is based on interviews and self-perceived experiences that describe how municipal officials and building conservators experience working with conservation processes in municipal organisations. The aim is to study the material from a cultural heritage theoretical framework to see how different conservation logics affect the experience of the work, how stories about cultural heritage are created by municipal employees and how it affects power relations and decisions about cultural heritage production. The study also shows how people view the past and cultural heritage values. I have interviewed twenty people who work with various administrative matters in supervision, building permits and planning in nine different municipalities in central Sweden and southern Norrland. This also includes a group of cultural heritage consultants who work with municipal matters but within the county museums' organisation and who represent the whole of Sweden. The theoretical starting point has been to study local cultural heritage constructions based on cultural heritage theory and discourse analytical methods. I use an autoethnographic perspective to reflect my own experiences in what my material provides. By studying the informants' statements, I have demonstrated different perspectives on cultural heritage, the thought figures, and mindscapes it creates. With the help of concepts such as logic and seeing competence, I have then been able to identify different logics surrounding conservation within the municipal organisation. How they create, confirm, or refute prevailing discourses. Previous research on modernity and individualism shows how the modernisation processes of the 20th century also affected the view of the physical environment and the need for cultural heritage production. It also shows how authority can influence decisions in certain directions, without a democratic process, by ‘political technologies. The results of the study show how different discourses and logics of conservation make heritage work meaningful, and how notions of place and class influence our relationship with the past and heritage. The study also shows how different actions influence decisions about cultural heritage. How we, both consciously and unconsciously, reproduce ‘given truths’ that partly affect the possibility of considering local cultural values, and partly provide space for the exercise of power.