Johanna Turunen

• University of Jyväskylä

Museot ovat historiallisesti toimineet identiteettien, normien ja valta-asetelmien rakentajina, tulkitsijoina ja muokkaajina. Nykypäivänä museoissa suhtaudutaan kuitenkin usein kriittisesti niiden historialliseen rooliin. Yhä useammin museoissa pyritään toimimaan yhteiskunnallisen muutoksen tuottajina ja hyödynnetään toisinaan jopa aktivistisia toi...

Cultural heritage is an expanding yet contested area of EU policymaking, which has recently been identified as an instrument for EU international cultural relations. In this article, drawing from critical heritage studies and recent scholarship on heritage diplomacy, we see external and internal cultural relations as blurred and deeply entangled in...

The article focuses on difficult heritage associated with three forms of structural violence in European history – the Communist and Nazi regimes and the former European colonies. We scrutinize how these three sources of difficult heritage are used in heritage diplomacy in the EU’s flagship heritage action, the European Heritage Label (EHL). On the...

Lectio praecursoria: Johanna Turunen's contemporary cultural studies dissertation “Unlearning narratives of privilege: A decolonial reading of the European Heritage Label” was examined at the University of Jyväskylä on the 24th September 2021. The opponent was Dr. Jasper Chalcraft (European University Institute) and the custos was Associate Profess...

In contrast to recent reinforcements of Europe's internal and external borders due to the refugee situation on the Mediterranean and the Covid-19 outbreak, talk of European borders has in the past decades focused on the freedom of mobility guaranteed by the Schengen treaty. In many senses, free intra-European mobility has become a recited truth in...

In this chapter, we outline the development process of the concept of poly-space – which conceptualizes the entanglement of multiple moments and different spatial, temporal, affective and cognitive experiences in one physical place, the heritage site. The concept was conceived based on the experiences that members of the EUROHERIT project gained wh...

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the new European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that h...

In the introductory chapter, we explain the core aims of the book and its point of departure for scrutinizing the European Union’s heritage politics, identifying an existing gap in research that the book seeks to fill. First, we explore how cultural and social changes of societies since the late twentieth century have influenced the practices and p...

The European Union funds diverse heritage conservation and promotion activities, but its core heritage initiatives, such as the European Heritage Label, are not funding instruments. However, the European Heritage Label is intertwined with the logic of economy in diverse ways. The focus of this chapter is the economic conditions of the European Heri...

In this chapter, we expligore the representation of gender and gendered narratives, and the ways in which they are (re)produced at the European Heritage Label sites. This European Union action still focuses on the mediation of grand European narratives that prioritize a white, male perspective, but a stronger representation of women and their persp...

For a number of decades, participation in heritage processes and practices has been increasingly addressed at various levels in cultural heritage policies and research. It has been emphasized that citizens should have a say in decisions about constructing, defining, interpreting, and representing cultural heritage. In this chapter, we analyse the d...

Based on our fieldwork experiences, we have developed the concept of poly-space to describe the co-existence of multiple moments and the interplay of different, overlapping, and intersecting spatial, temporal, affective, sensory, and cognitive experiences at a heritage site. Poly-space is not necessarily a phenomenon solely connected with heritage...

In this chapter, we analyse the European Heritage Label as a geopolitical discourse in which perceptions of both European heritage and European scale are formed in relation to other spatial scales. To scrutinize these scalar relations and related hierarchies we combine critical geopolitics and critical heritage studies. Based on the practitioner in...

In this chapter, we examine power dynamics in the governance of European cultural heritage in the European Union, with an empirical focus on the European Heritage Label. We discuss the complex power relations inherent in the European Heritage Label by examining how the decision- and policy-making, governance, interaction, and (hierarchical) positio...

Several collectivities use cultural heritage in their attempts to construct communities and produce identity and a sense of belonging. Since both participation and community have become core concepts in heritage making, in this chapter we explore what kind of heritage communities are constructed through the notions of participation in the context o...

Heritage sites play an important role in generating and transmitting heritage. Human bodies featuring in the exhibitions of the European Heritage Label sites can be understood as emotionally charged sticky objects in this process. While bodies as sticky objects evoke emotions in audiences, the emotive quality of an object can also create stickiness...

EUropean borders play a prominent role in the framework of European heritage. For instance, the decision of the European Heritage Label action specifies that the candidate sites have to show their cross-border or pan-European nature that goes beyond the national borders. In this chapter, we approach the European Heritage Label as a geopolitical dis...

This introduction to the themed section Using our Past, Defining our Futures – Debating Heritage and Culture in Europe summarises the three articles and outlines their approach to heritage. The authors all share a vision of heritage as a future-oriented tool for change. Heritage is interpreted as a cultural process that seeks to link past and prese...

By analysing three museums exhibition, this article investigates how the history of European colonialism is approached in an attempt to identify potential for decolonising European minds. The case studies consist of a temporary exhibition (2016–2017) concerning German colonialism at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin; the permanent exhibit...

Turunen discusses how the “European significance” of the European Heritage Label (EHL) sites has been narrated through interconnections of European values and European integration. She argues that, in the context of the EHL, integration is intricately linked to the notion of spreading common values, which in turn is entangled with Eurocentrism. The...