THE SOUTHEASTERN CULTURAL HERITAGE OBSERVATORY
A MEMORY AND INFORMATION NETWORK
Keywords:
cultural heritage, social memory, collaborative information constructionAbstract
Drawing on the authors’ research and extension experiences within the team of the Southeast Cultural Heritage Observatory, a project dedicated to monitoring processes of heritage-making and safeguarding cultural expressions, this article examines a diverse yet coherent set of practices and representations that give substance to the Observatory’s digital repository. The repository is analyzed through the dialectical encounter between the fields of Information Science and Social Memory. In line with discussions associated with the so-called social paradigm of information, our primary objective goes beyond understanding the platform as a static archive of ethnographic research. By demonstrating it as a network of collective memories, we consider it a starting point for reflections on the role of collaborative and shared information construction as a substantial resource for political and epistemological shifts in the creation and contestation of territories, heritage, and citizenship.The methodology guiding this network-based research is qualitative in nature and ethnographically inspired. We begin with the social relationships established among partners, researchers, and heritage bearers involved in the Observatory through symmetrical dialogues—developed in face-to-face and virtual meetings, open classes, research seminars, territorial walks, and related activities—in order to understand the digital repository itself as a tool for performing ways of thinking-and-doing with others. Rather than an endpoint, it is conceived as an expansion of points of departure.