Inheritance and Identity of Cultural Heritage

Olimpia Niglio

Kyoto University, Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto, Japan.

DOI: 10.4236/als.2014.21001                

Abstract

Generally the community describesthe “cultural heritage” such as historic, artistic, scientific and traditional. These definitions often coincide with the attribution of “value” and “identity”. Many answers about what could “cultural heritage” be are explained as a set together with their specific value, such as landscape and architecture of high artistic value and historic materials of scientific value. In contrast it is not possible to rely on this generality of definitions. The reality shows that the definition of value of “cultural heritage” changes in relation to the person, culture, geography, social and economic conditions. In other words, in relation to the person, the standpoint of value of “cultural heritage” is different according to each category, such as ruins, works of art, historic cities and gardens, and it is rare that one category simultaneously holds many of such values. It is believed that there are no words or phrases that comprehensively explain the various values that prescribe “cultural heritage”. Therefore in defining “cultural heritage” its values not must be specifically expressed as historic, artistic, scientific and others, but should be left in a way that can correspond also to the concept of a “cultural heritage” the significance of identity and of inheritance. Define the value of cultural heritage means to analyze the identity of the site and its contents of inheritance. The concepts of value and inheritance analyzed here are not related to economic considerations. Differently these concepts are analyzed with reference to scientific theories of A.K. Sen, M. W. Feldman and L. Cavalli-Sforza. In fact this paper proposes a reflection on these concepts with the support of interdisciplinary studies.

Keywords

Scientific Value; Identity; Inheritance; Knowledge; Cultural Proprieties

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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