VIRTUAL London Heritages Conference

Abstract

One of the most pressing contemporary issues in heritage studies is the impact of mass tourism on both tangible and intangible heritage, including monuments, sites, traditional events, and ancestral crafts. Conservation, accessibility, gentrification, the commodification of places and traditions, are some of the key issues faced by heritage managers, local communities, and visitors alike. This paper shifts focus to address a different but equally important set of challenges affecting heritage: the desertification of territories, population aging, neglect, abandonment, and the loss of cultural transmission. Drawing on data from the northern region of Portugal, where large rural areas are experiencing depopulation, this paper explores the role of heritage in regions grappling with what has been termed the demographic challenge, the erosion of the social fabric that supports heritage, and the consequent decline in its symbolic value. Just as heritage relies on values and social recognition on one hand, and administrative acknowledgment on the other, the absence of collective engagement and a supportive civic context diminishes opportunities for recognition, devalues heritage, and undermines its social sustainability. At a time when people-centered and participatory approaches to heritage are at the forefront of theoretical frameworks, it is crucial to ask: with whom should we engage in these areas? How can we recover or reinvigorate processes of heritage valorization and revitalization? Initiatives from the north of Portugal, ranging from spontaneous citizen mobilization in associations to contemporary art projects and institutional cultural transmission programs, will be examined as exploratory cases that can help tackle a difficult and challenging situation.