Cultural heritage and social capital

Jacek Purchla
Jacek Purchla - art historian and economist, specialist in cul­
tural heritage, urban history, and Krakow studies. He is full
professor o f humanities (professor ordinarius) and a member
o f the Polish Academy o f Arts and Sciences. He is the head
o f the Department o f Economic and Social H istory and
the unesco Chair for Heritage and Urban Studies at the Kra­
kow University of Economics, as well as the head of the Centre
of European Heritage, Institute of European Studies at the Jag-
iellonian University. His research areas are urban development,
social history and art history o f the 19th and 20th centuries, as
well as the theory and protection of cultural heritage. He is
the author o f over 400 academic works, including a number of
books. Between 1990 to 1991 he was a vice-mayor of the city of
Krakow. He is the founder of the International Cultural Centre
in Krakow, and has been its director since its inception in 1991.
He is a titular member and a vice-president o f the Comité in­
ternational d’histoire de l’art (c i h a ), as well as a member of
many organisations and associations, including the Europa
Nostra Council in The Hague and the Art Studies Committee
at the Polish Academy o f Sciences. Since 2000 he has chaired
the Monument Preservation Council at the M inistry o f Cul­
ture and National Heritage.
Cultural heritage and social capital
Jacek Purchla

Cultural heritage is a concept that, symptomatically, has come into its

own in recent times. In this context it is vital to note that while a historic
monument or relic belongs to the past, heritage serves contemporary aims.
Moreover, heritage is not simply the stock o f a given culture’s material
assets, but also the sum o f our memory and identity - and this is part of
the increasing significance o f cultural heritage. For heritage belongs to
us all, and access to heritage is a fundamental human right. Herein lies
the key role of social capital, both in the dynamic process of constantly
creating and reinterpreting heritage, and for the effective protection of
that heritage. Cultural heritage today is not only a resource in need of
protection, but also a potential that must be exploited for future develop­
ment. For only by adroitly and harmoniously incorporating heritage into
the great civilisational change that we are witnessing can we guarantee
its effective protection.
Until recently - especially in the Polish political reality - the canon of
our national heritage appeared to be unmoved, and its protection, is above
all the domain of a closed shop of specialists - monument conservators.
How far has the transformation that we are experiencing today altered
our attitude to heritage and its place among the priorities in the life of
our society?
Recent years have brought a pronounced confrontation between oppos­
ing tendencies. On the one hand the “field” o f heritage has broadened expo­
nentially, as has the potential for its own protection. On the other, it is hard
to overlook the fact that it is becoming marginalised and instrumentalised,
while the cultural heritage protection system is clearly in crisis. Transfor­
mation has presented new challenges and threats to heritage in Poland.
The threats are clearly discernible in the centres of our cities. The rapid

The 1st Heritage Forum of Central Europe | 71

changes to their cultural landscape, and in many cases its degradation, are
the result of the system transformation and the triumph of market forces
combined with the weakness of the “soft state”. The transition from passive,
static thinking about heritage in the categories of sacred relics of the past
to its protection in the context of the elemental processes of privatisation
and commercialisation of the public space, requires urgent, fundamental
changes to the system of managing the potential o f heritage.
Nevertheless, the issues inherent in heritage protection and the new
area o f conflicts and threats that emerged w ith transformation cannot
be taken in isolation from the evident crisis in the institutional culture
sector in Poland. In the case of post-1989 Poland, the tension between
politics, economics and culture outlined by Daniel Bell in his now clas­
sic book, The cultural contradictions of capitalism, translates above all into
the weakened position o f culture, its marginalisation within politics, and
rapid commercialisation. The issues presented by the departure from “real
socialism” to building the structures of a sovereign, democratic state are
compounded by the societal processes that are the consequences of these
changes, and these are effecting fundamental changes to the status o f her­
itage in the life o f the nation and the state.
The report on the functioning of the cultural heritage protection
system in Poland since 1989, drawn up under my direction in 2009 for
the Congress o f Polish Culture, highlights three issues o f significance for
the future condition o f our historic resources which it would be expedient
to recall at this point.
The first is the rapidly accelerating process o f transformation of the en­
tire built heritage stock. This is partly the consequence o f increasing
wealth in societies, changes in technical and utilitarian standards, changes
in the usage of space, economic processes, globalisation, cultural transfor­
mations, and demographic changes. These developments will bring an end
to the functioning of the age-old "natural selection” mechanism by which
historic monuments were identified. This process essentially involved any
sites that, for whatever reason, had survived long enough to become rec­
ognised as monuments. Their “monument value” lay, above all, in the fact
o f their survival and was not necessarily a consequence o f their quality
as works o f architecture or construction. Nowadays, the unprecedented
explosion o f our capability and need to transform our environment may
cause this mechanism to become defunct. This is the reason for the im ­
portance of an active conservation policy, pursued with an understand­
ing o f the nature of the changes that are occurring. Only sites to which

72 I Jacek Purchla
monument value (in whatever sense) is attributed will have any chance
of preservation and protection from destruction or diametric alteration.
This is why the honing and intensification o f the selection process is of
such immense significance.
The second issue is the increasing need for heritage. This is by no means
a paradox, but a logical consequence of the rapid, fundamental transforma­
tions in our environment. In the face of the all-standardising force of glo­
balisation and the vast rise in the economic importance o f tourism, there is
an increasing need for all forms of heritage, above all architectural and urban
monuments, of course. The potential for exploitation of heritage in tourism is
proportional to its value, but also to its legibility, visual attractiveness, poten­
tial for adding tourist infrastructure, and size. For this reason, protection of
whole complexes - whether industrial, urban or rural - will be of increasing
significance. This “demand for heritage” will determine its character. From
the perspectives o f both education and information (identity) and tourism
(economy), heritage will need to conform to notions of heritage - notions
shaped by mass culture and the notions of the mass consumer. It will be
a heritage understood and treated as a “cultural product”, which means that
it will have to meet expectations bound up with the cultural product model
and not those of the monument in its traditional sense. This opposition is
of crucial significance. A cultural product is viewed from the angle of its
model and judged by how it compares with that model, unlike the monu-
ment-as-document, which is valued, above all, as a unique work. The monu-
ment-as-product may also be appreciated for its “novelty” value, even though
this is in opposition to its “antique” value (Alois Riegl). Something similar is
true of the “completeness” and "legibility”, which are also important features
of the cultural product, because they facilitate an understanding of the mon­
ument. In the monument-as-document these attributes are not more im­
portant than the authenticity of its form and substance. And lastly, there is
the obvious utilitarian value of the cultural product, ie the extent to which
the monument-as-product is adapted to serve all the functions expected by
the user (the tourist). The question of attractiveness is similar: a product
has to appeal to and be accepted by its consumer. In the case o f the monu-
ment-as-document-as-artwork such elements are of secondary importance
and should not impact on the form in which it is preserved. In the light of this
confrontation the most significant attributes of the monument - its authentic
substance and form - cease to be of dominant significance.
The third issue is the clear shift in emphasis from the value of the herit­
age to the needs o f society. This change in the treatment o f heritage might

The 1st Heritage Forum of Central Europe | 73

even classify as a change in the ontological status of heritage. To date, it
has enjoyed a special status as an element of the past that had found it­
self in the present, and hence required separate treatment. This special
treatment of monuments w as rooted in the b elief that heritage is not
the property o f contemporary generations, who are merely its guardians
and hence do not have the right to dispose freely of heritage and trans­
form it as they see fit. Now, however, we have come to the assumption that
we are the sole proprietors o f heritage.1
In the conclusion to the report I emphasised that none of the changes in
politics or mindset that have taken place in our country have yet brought
a breakthrough in approaches to heritage management. This is deepening
the crisis in the system of protection for cultural heritage stock in Poland.
The systemic problems underlying the conflicts in cultural heritage pro­
tection today are due not only to the accelerating processes o f change,
but also to the inadequacy and incoherence of current state policy in this
area. The existing legal and financial instruments forming the monument
protection system were designed to “serve” a static system in conditions of
a centrally planned command and control economy. Today, we in Poland
face the urgent need to create an effective heritage management system
that local communities will find convincing, for it is they, together with
the owners and users o f historic substance, that are the fundamental play­
ers in the care of our heritage.2
Thus, there can be no doubt today that social capital must be given a key
role in new state strategies for cultural heritage! We might add that with
regard to protection o f the natural environment, contemporary society’s
responsibility towards future generations is taken into account consist­
ently and universally. This is an example that we need to follow, by im ple­
menting, as rapidly as possibly, a sim ilar approach to the protection of
our cultural environment - the more so because, like natural resources,
heritage resources are non-renewable.
In many Western European countries, professional heritage protection
systems are supported by factors such as the nature of the heritage, cul­
tural policy, the cultural cohesion of the society, its attachment to tradition,
its ethnic composition, its degree of wealth, a law-abiding ethic, financial

1 Raport o systemie ochrony dziedzictwa kulturowego w Polsce po roku 1989, ed. Jacek Purchla,
Warszawa 2009, pp. 18-20.
2 Ibidem, p. 70.

74 I Jacek Purchla
 priorities, the volume of tourist traffic, the climate, and so on. And social
capital is also a fundamental instrument in developing such heritage pro­
tection systems (systems in the broad sense o f the word) in these countries!
One example is the official change in conservation policy in Great Brit­
ain, a country where heritage protection is a priority. The entire monu­
ment protection system - from the legislation, and system of financing to
the technicalities of conservation and creating new jobs in government of­
fices - is society-oriented. The emphasis has been transferred from the his­
torical values to the needs and conceptions o f contemporary consumers.
Observation of mature democracies and the virtually natural care in
which they take of their heritage, drawing on tradition, suggests the hy­
pothesis that Polish society is only just em barking on the stage o f pub­
lic debate about the real role of historic substance in contemporary life.
Above all, this debate needs to lead to a valorisation o f local heritage by
local communities, in the form o f local government monument protection
plans, socio-economic development plans and other local bye-laws. Local
government and civil society are crucial to the creation o f a modern cul­
tural heritage protection system in Poland.

In order to achieve these aims, it is vital that the state adopt a strategy for
developing social capital in the cause o f cultural heritage. Since the Polish
state has proved incapable of producing an effective system of protecting
our cultural heritage and the existing system is insufficient in legal, or­
ganisational and financial terms, devolving heritage protection processes
to society is now our prim ary challenge. Social capital should be nurtured
as an opportunity both for protection of cultural heritage and for its ex­
ploitation as a pro-development resource. This applies to both tangible and
intangible heritage; the latter is rapidly gaining in significance.
The strategy for developing social capital thus needs to address a broad
spectrum o f issues. These may tentatively be divided into the following
areas:
l. Harnessing social capital in the process of creating and identifying cultural
heritage. These processes are based on social bonds and collective memory,
and the products they beget include places of memory and reinforcement of
the sense of community. One instructive example of the synergetic relations
between social capital and cultural heritage is the experience o f the Podhale
region. In the society of this region there is an impressive community bond
and a high degree of awareness of the value of heritage and its significance
for local development. Poland s particular experiences in the 20th century

The 1st Heritage Forum of Central Europe | 75

 are such that reclaiming the lost memory of events such as the Holocaust is
also imperative (a good example of this is the experience of the Krakow dis­
trict of Kazimierz), as is taking ownership of alien heritage (a superb instance
of which is the heritage policy pursued by Wroclaw city council since 1990).
The foundation for these processes must be reinforcement of social capital.
2. Undertaking w ork on a comprehensive system o f heritage education,
above all by teaching respect for tradition and appreciation of the value
o f its testimonies. At the same time, heritage education should not be re­
duced to “talking about the past”, but should also include reflection on
the present and the future. Thus, it is also about releasing the creativity
and innovation that is latent in culture by "talking about heritage”. This
model of education should teach not only responsibility for heritage, but
also respect for cultural diversity, and the skill of dialogue. The prim ary
place for creating social capital in this area is school!
3. A policy of building a broad base of heritage awareness. This should be
seen not only as crucial to effective cultural heritage protection, but also as
fundamental to building a civil society. One o f the conditions for success
here is skilled cooperation with the media.
4. State support for active participation o f civil society in the protection and
care o f monuments, in particular when it comes to harnessing ngo po­
tential. The increasing activeness and participation o f society in aspects
of M KDiN the protection and care of monuments is not accompanied by
effective state policy to reinforce this social capital. Many o f the ngos ac­
tive in “the heritage sector” do not receive the necessary support from
the state. This is partly due to the anachronistic treatment o f ngos and
charities in Poland.
5. Creation o f mechanisms for exploiting synergy in cooperation with bor­
ough councils, ngos and the private sector for effective heritage manage­
ment at the local level. This may serve as both an important tool in local
development and a decentralisation instrument.
6. Exploitation o f cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable regional
development and protection of the cultural landscape. Areas that require
coordinated policy at the regional level in this respect include: the envi­
ronment, social development, culture, education, tourism and economic
development, spatial planning.
7. Development o f research and higher education in the field o f efficient her­
itage planning/heritage management. This new type of heritage education
is the self-appointed work of the Academy of Heritage run by the Interna­
tional Cultural Centre in Krakow since 2001. The icc runs a two-semester

76 I Jacek Purchla
 post-graduate study course (with Cracow University o f Economics) on
heritage management aimed at young conservators, local government of­
ficials and teachers. The positive experiences this has yielded should be
better exploited in order to create a network of institutions across Poland
training new personnel in cultural heritage policy.
8. A strategy o f protecting and developing traditional crafts and skills
on the basis o f intersectoral collaboration. This should be founded on
the good practices promoted by the Folk Universities (Uniwersytety Lu­
dowe), which harness the synergy between artistic circles, scientists and
civil initiatives (examples include the M ałopolski Folk University and
the Kashubian Folk University).
9. Reinforcing and stimulating cooperation between entities in various sectors:
state institutions, the education system, cultural institutions, ngos, industry,
private firms, and spontaneous networks founded on digital technologies.
10. Propagation in society of a heritage protection philosophy understood,
above all, as wise management o f the changing function and potential of
heritage. This also requires an integrated approach to the issue o f the cul­
tural landscape, as an extremely complex system of interconnected vessels.

As this list shows, it is not only the form o f historic sites and systems -
which earlier thinking on heritage protection encouraged us to think - but
also their function that are currently decisive in terms o f how they can
be protected. Heritage is not m erely the sum o f historic sites or objects in
a given area. On the one hand it has a symbolic stratum connected with
its interpretation as a sacred sphere, while on the other it is also a market
product, which still comes as a shock to many. In this sense, efficient herit­
age management entails finding a satisfactory answer to the question of
its accessibility and its consumers. Opportunities for spreading this new
mode of thinking about heritage as a factor in development are offered
by Poland’s membership o f the European Union, its access to eu funds,
and the reinforcement o f the role o f local government as a “guardian o f
the common good”.
In conclusion, it is vital to emphasise that our identity today is expe­
riencing rapid evolution from a defensive outlook to an innovative stance.
This breeds an increasing need for us to redefine ourselves and open up to
others, so promoting the interaction between social capital and heritage
that is becoming vital for the rebuilding o f social cohesion.

Translated from the Polish by Jessica Taylor-Kucia

The 1st Heritage Forum of Central Europe | 77