It's ‘Retro-Mania'

For the design-based companies, the museum and the company archive can represent a source of new ideas and of innovation in general. Designers and creatives, through a constructive immersion in the museum environment, could perceive and elaborate the complexity of the heritage-based knowledge, finally expressing it in a different forms such as innovative ideas, models, prototypes, projects, and, new products.

Heritage Storytelling

There is a growing interest towards storytelling in communication management. Stories work. How can stories and storytelling support heritage communication? The first part of the chapter aims at describing the fundamental role storytelling can play for heritage sites, identifying its benefits. It analyses its being a process of co-creation, made by storytellers and story holders. The second part of the chapter identifies and describes the most relevant aspects to consider for an effective storytelling: from finding good stories to being able to tell them through different channels, creating transmedia narrations.

Contextualising Theology

While theology is an international discipline, there is a need to contextualize theology so that it can address the local expectations. This theme is critical for contemporary theological curriculum. Reformed Church University is providing an Honours Degree in Theology. Towards improving the curriculum, there is a need for contextualisation as an ongoing exercise as the context continues to change from time to time. Theology should therefore aim at addressing contemporary issues and increase the program viability. The author explores all the potential areas that need to be considered to achieve a heritage-based curriculum. While theology sometimes can be regarded as an exclusive discipline, there is potential for improvement when it incorporates national heritage.

Towards a Landscape Ethics

The author seeks in this chapter to contribute to the deepening of the philosophy of landscape, an area of philosophy still in constitution, paying special attention to the ethical dimension. If the ethics of nature have deep roots in the great systems of idealism and romanticism, and if environmental ethics was most recently formed in the 1980s, offering solutions to the crisis of nature, a landscape-specific ethic did not merit still a sufficiently distinctive theoretical treatment. Some previous notes favor the need for this differentiation. Landscape, as it encompasses a wide range of intersections and interrelationships between various levels of reality—from natural to intervened or highly artificial landscapes—cannot be analytically extracted from nature. Landscape, as a differentiating concept, multiplied by unlimited world configurations, cannot be extracted from the (global) environment because, since each landscape is an individuality, its existence is always local.

Europe as Ideal Landscape

This chapter displays an ideal landscape of Europe by interpreting the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus from Pieter Brueghel the Elder, giving hint to a constellation of concepts that circumscribe the European identity through the poetic metaphor of the Western World as the archipelago of the sunset referring at the same time to a constellation of Ancient Greek myth, which represents the basic tales of Europe conceived as a geopolitical, linguistic, and cultural problem. However, it acquires a deeper connotation and meaning if it is looked from a metaphorical point of view, considering Europe as an ideal landscape with a peculiar mood or disposition. Europe as a cultural identity consolidated since Renaissance, along the maritime explorations and the emergence of the concept of landscape, which developed from the fields of painting and literature into the scientific description of different world regions up to a new philosophical discipline called the philosophy of landscape.

Analyzing Metadata for Evaluation of Architectural Heritage by Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Analysis Through Bibliometric Data

Currently, countries are opting for the best solutions for conserving their architectural heritage. The solution may be the intervention of the present architectural heritage, rehabilitation, and reuse of it by maintaining a social-cultural setting and economic stability. However, preserving all sorts of architectural heritage is not possible due to its economic status. Researchers are finding solutions to retain it for the future. For getting solutions, different literature has been identified and analyzed for bibliometric analysis. This chapter offers the bibliometric analysis of the architectural heritage concerning multi-criteria decision-making analysis, which considers qualitative and quantitative parameters in a hierarchy and involves opinions of stakeholders in a transparent manner. This chapter aims to find various themes from the database as the core, current, emerging, and saturated themes for the evaluation of architectural heritage. It also focuses on analyzing the quantification of the articles and conceptualizing of the emerging areas of research.

Identification Criteria of Heritage

At a decisive moment in the life of humankind on Earth, when the destruction of its natural and cultural heritage becomes an imminent threat, an ontological reflection reveals itself crucial. There is a lack of clarity in the current paradigm regarding the identification of natural environments, cultural landscapes, and artificial environments, so this chapter aims to contribute for a debate about them. More precisely, a methodology developed by Machado in the context of ecosystems, establishing relationship with the different typologies of tangible heritage, is proposed. The importance of distinction between various typologies of environments and heritage is supported by the fundamentals of environmental ethics. Founded upon them, the concept of cultural landscape is discussed. The chapter also addresses the concept of artificiality, which is a key tool to comprehend the biosphere state of damage and the genesis of the geological epoch in which we live, the Anthropocene. This is, after all, the reason why it is urgent to protect natural and cultural heritage.

The Added Value of the Postage Stamp in Promoting National Cultural Heritage and Identity

This chapter highlights the unique status of the postage stamp that, thanks to its multiple dimensions as an official symbol of its nation, contributes significantly to disseminate and promote the cultural heritage, history, identity, and all aspects of cultural life. Many national and international activities are organized around the postage stamp in the fields of culture, the economy, education, history, tourism, etc. Indeed, postage stamps can be identified with various aspects of philosophy, the economy, and education that are part of “a new paradigm of heritage.” Furthermore, the unique quasi-monetary status of the postage stamp is subject to laws and regulations that are enshrined in an international intergovernmental treaty that is renewed every four years by the 192 member countries of the Universal Postal Union. Such laws are essential to safeguard the postage stamp against industry abuses that are undermining the credibility, name, and identity of stamp-issuing countries as well as depriving their national authorities of important revenue.

The Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Serra de Estrela, Between UNESCO Geopark and Lithium Mining

With a review of the academic and journalistic literature, this chapter aims to further explore the shift toward a sustainable tourism in the context of UNESCO Natural Parks and Geoparks. Furthermore, the authors point out the persistence of a contradiction, that is, the presence of mining activities in the surrounding of above-mentioned UNESCO areas. After briefly reconstructing the socio-economic history of the mountain area of Serra da Estrela, located in the region of Beira Interior, in Central Portugal, the authors focus on the tension between two aspects: 1) the Post-Fordist model, concerning the transition to tourism development related to creation of UNESCO Natural Park and Geopark and 2) the reinforcement of lithium mining production and discovery of new deposits as an energetic and economic strategy for Portugal. In particular, the latter issue has given rise to various groups and movements of protest on a local basis. The claims of these groups suggest a radical paradigm shift in the development plans and in the conception of heritage in an ecological sense.

Cultural Heritage and Tourism Development

This chapter aims to offer valuable insight into different aspects of cultural heritage, heritage tourism, and status of cultural tourism development in the state of Rajasthan, India. Status of UNESCO World Heritage sites has been examined from the trends of visitors and revenue generation. Results of data analysis indicate the very slow annual average growth rate of international tourists to UNESCO World Heritage sites while for domestic tourists, this rate is encouraging and progressive. Institutional set up to manage heritage in Rajasthan has been examined. Important challenges faced by heritage have been described.