Genealogy of the Concept of Heritage in the European Commission’s Policy Discourse

: This article investigates the genealogy of the concept of heritage in the European Commission’s (EC) policy discourse from 1973 to 2016. Based on conceptual analysis of 2,412 documents gathered from the EUR-Lex database, the uses of the concept in the EC’s policy discourse were categorized into seven thematic areas: nature, environment, and biodiversity; human habitats; economy and employment; agricultural products and foodstuffs; promotion of societal development and stability; audiovisuality and digitalization; and European identity and integration. In the EC’s discourse, the concept of heritage develops in the context of intertwined phases of EU integration and cultural Europeanization. The study indicates how the EC mostly governs heritage through implicit cultural policies included in diverse policy sectors other than culture.

in 1992-gives a specific legal basis for EU cultural policy, including heritage policy as its article on culture aims at "bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore." 2 The aim of this article is to explore the genealogy 3 of the concept of heritage in the EU's policy discourse, particularly in that of the European Commission (EC) as the core authority of the EU responsible for proposing legislation and implementing decisions.We approach heritage as a social, cultural, discursive, communicative, and performative process that uses the past in the present with an aim to influence the future 4 and is concerned with regulation, mediation, and negotiation of cultural and historical values and narratives. 5Our attempt is to understand the emergence and evolution of the concept of heritage in the EC's policy discourse in its thematic, semantic, and political contexts.We ask what kinds of heritage-related conceptual choices are used in the EC's policies.How and why do the thematic focuses and semantics of the concept vary in these policies?How do the meanings and uses of the concept in these policies reflect the development of the EU's politics and integration process?We explore these questions in an 2. "Treaty on European Union" Official Journal of the European Communities C191 (1992): 1-112, here 24.
3. Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits II (Paris: Gallimard, 1994).interdisciplinary framework that combines theoretical discussions from cultural policy research, critical heritage studies, and EU studies.We use a conceptual approach to analyze policies as processes in which actors, concepts, and "technologies of power" in Foucauldian terms interact for governing heritage-related issues and shaping conceptions of heritage.

Context and Theoretical Framework
In cultural policy research, scholars have made a distinction between explicit and implicit cultural policies. 6While explicit cultural policies are labeled or articulated as such by the policy-makers, implicit cultural policies do not form a coherent administrative entity nor are they primarily meant to impact cultural matters.Instead, implicit cultural policies are policies related to other fields that nevertheless have cultural effects. 7Although explicit EU cultural policy has become more active since the turn of the millennium, cultural policy has previously been-as still commonly is-6.Jeremy Ahearne, "Cultural Policy Explicit and Implicit: A Distinction and Some Uses," 7. Palonen, "Assigning Meaning," 147.implicitly present in EU policy sectors that do not primarily deal with culture.The key channel of implicit EU cultural policy is the distribution of regional and structural funds aiming to decrease economic and infrastructural disparities between the poorer and richer areas of Europe.Regional funds have often functioned as cultural policy tools as cities and art institutes have managed to successfully apply for non-cultural earmarked funds by highlighting in their projects employment and enterprise rather than culture. 8Both explicit and implicit EU cultural policies are inextricably intertwined with the economic rationale defining most of the EU's internal policies.In practice, it may be difficult to distinguish between explicit and implicit EU cultural policies, as cultural dimensions are explicitly included in various non-cultural EU policies whose underlying objectives are of a socio-economic and industrial nature. 9ritage as an ambiguous concept that is easily transformed into a tool for diverse ideological and political projects is addressed in both explicit and implicit EU cultural policies. 10e EU's regional, structural, and rural development and maritime and fisheries funds have been used for conserving, promoting, and managing heritage as a part of economic development 8. Ibid.The EU cultural policy exemplifies the expansion of EU governance into diverse policy sectors, but long before its explicit cultural policy, the EC had promoted EU integration by using culture and heritage for identity and image-building.Hence, culture has been given multifaceted instrumental value in the EU, and the cultural sector has been used as a channel of power, or a In literature, this process has been conceptualized, with different connotations, as "governmentalization of culture" 13 (referring to the EC's attempts to make culture more governable and simultaneously a target and instrument of EU's multiple policy objectives) or "cultural significance of Europeanization" 14 (referring to the EC's emphasis on the cultural specificity of Europe in its policy rhetoric and attempts to build a "European identity" through culture).
Although the EC frequently refers to heritage, the concept is rarely explicitly defined in EU policy discourse.However, the uses of the concept entail various implicit meanings through which the notion of heritage is discursively constructed.The conceptual approach enables us to explore the genealogy of the concept in the EC's policies as actants that create new social and semantic spaces and webs of meaning.Since problems and subjects are constructed and governed through policies, 15 it is crucial to investigate policies with a conceptual approach.This is why we focus our attention on the concept of heritage itself to understand its role and meaning in the evolution of EU policy.Although there is extensive literature 16 highlighting the significance of the idea of heritage in EU policy and integration discourses, and several studies 17 have in particular explored the ideologies and politics included in the recent EU heritage initiatives, academia still lacks a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the concept of heritage as such in all EC policy sectors.This article seeks to respond to this gap in research.
Our analysis focuses on policy documents produced and/or published by the EC.The data was gathered in June 2016 from the English version of the EUR-Lex, 18 a database of legal texts of the EU, with the search term "heritage" occurring somewhere in the texts, and by selecting "European Commission" as their "author."The search found 2,412 documents including diverse document types ranging from preparatory notes to directives between the years 1973 and 2016.These documents were analyzed with conceptual analysis by focusing on the meanings given to the concept of heritage and the thematic, semantic, and political contexts in which it is referred to or discussed.Since the research included only documents in English, possible semantic differences of concepts in different languages do not belong to the scope of our study.The first reading of the documents was primarily led by an inductive logic of inquiry.Its purpose was to identify the variety of linguistic attributes that were used to define the concept and the diversity of thematic and semantic contexts in which the concept was used.In a deeper data-driven analysis, the various identified contexts were combined into seven main thematic areas on the basis of the similar policy goals enhanced in these contexts.Finally, the temporal development and transformation of these areas and the notions of heritage used in them were examined within the broader context of EU policies and integration.
Our analytical framework relies on conceptual history and its constructivist perspective on concepts, emphasizing their contested, controversial, and transforming nature. 19 are approached and defined. 23Linguistic rituals, 24 such as repetition, metaphors, and phrases taken from earlier documents, are typical ways of using power in policy documents.Through them, considerably different elements can be combined as an assemblage, 25 and the documents and policies designed in them are motivated and given authority to convince their readers-particularly civil servants at various governmental levels belonging to the process of institutionalization of these policies.In the policy documents, coherent narratives are commonly constructed by showing that the matter under discussion has already been addressed earlier.Indeed, the genre of the EU policy documents is characterized by numerous references to other EU policy documents.The documents seek to present the stands taken in them as "natural" consequences of earlier discourses in a logical continuum.But policy discourses shape the matter under discussion and modify the ideas of a community governed by policies.Hence, EC documents are here interpreted as expressions concerning the EU and its construction as a political, social, and cultural community.
The EC is not a single actor in the EU's political sphere nor does it represent a unanimous author of the EU's narrative. 26Its policy documents are created in multi-stage processes and in cooperation with diverse actors-including policy-makers from different policy sectors as well as external experts and stakeholders consulted in various events during the process.The documents, 23.Shore and Wright, "Policy: A New Field for Anthropology," 22.

Conceptual Choices in the EC's Heritage Discourse
The EC policies dealing with heritage are formed through the diverse conceptual choices regarding the concept of heritage that are made in the policy documents included in the data.The broad variety of attributes attached to heritage indicates the diversity of matters that are dealt with as heritage in the EC's policy discourse.This variety and the ease of naming diverse phenomena and cultural forms as heritage is also a political act through which the object of the policy can be approached from different angles.Naming phenomena as heritage attaches symbolic meanings to them, like the transmission of the valuable past, appreciation of continuity, and importance of preservation.Most commonly the documents rely on a general division between cultural and natural heritage.In the documents, both concepts are often further specified depending on the focus of the policy-ranging, for example, from maritime to woodland heritage in the case of natural heritage, and from archeological to film heritage and from culinary to literary heritage in the case of cultural heritage.Although cultural and natural heritage are often referred to in the same phrase in the documents, their division is rarely conceptually challenged.However, the concept of rural heritage-which seeks to combine landscape, built heritage, and agricultural traditions into a conceptual entity-both explicitly and implicitly bypasses this division.With this concept, the policy discourse is able to address issues that are difficult to locate to the categories of "culture" or "nature" or that simultaneously cover both.
The conceptual division between tangible and intangible heritage in the data reflects the generalization of these concepts in academic and heritage policy discourses during the 2000s.The demarcation has its foundation particularly in UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003).While UNESCO's Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) emphasizes the material, touchable dimension of heritage, the later convention broadens the idea of heritage by focusing on its immaterial, nontouchable dimension.Although the EC's policy discourse in the 2000s brings out the concept of intangible heritage, the heritage that the documents mostly deal with is, however, very concrete.
Usually, what is referred to are physical sites or areas, buildings, artifacts, art works, and products. 28The concreteness of the idea of heritage in the data may result from the documents' genre and the mode of EU policies in general.EU policies seek to finance safeguarding, 28.See Lähdesmäki, "Politics of Tangibility, Intangibility, and Place."conservation, and promotion of and access to heritage through diverse funds.This financial support is granted to specified measures and concrete actions suggested by the local and national actors applying for the support.Concrete measures in safeguarding heritage seem to juxtapose with the notion of concreteness of heritage in material terms.Moreover, since 1990 the EC has grafted the categorization of tangible heritage onto the notions of "movable" and "non-/immovable," which again emphasized the physical ties to locations.These categories are referred to less in the 2010s, possibly due to UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, as the whole concept of heritage broadens and is approached in a more "integrated" manner in the EC's policy discourse.
Despite the "concreteness" of heritage in the data, the documents also include rhetoric in which heritage is discussed in more abstract terms.Particularly when the documents discuss the idea of a common European heritage as the basis of the idea of a European identity, the policy discourse represents intangible values, such as peace, democracy, human rights, tolerance, and respect for diversity, as both its common source and manifestation. 29e inherent temporal dimension of heritage is commonly underlined in the documents.
The concept of heritage is typically used to refer to history and its traces in the present, old artifacts, and practices transmitted from the past.The temporal dimension is also emphasized by using concepts of historical or traditional heritage.These kinds of explicit and implicit temporal emphases and conceptual choices in the documents underline the aims of treating the object of the policy as particularly valuable, unique, and, thus, important to be appreciated and preserved.In terms of area-based attributes given to heritage, the main explicit and implicit framework of the 29.See also Lähdesmäki, "Politics of Tangibility, Intangibility, and Place."concept is Europe.In addition, the policy documents connect the concept to other geographical scales, such as local, regional, and national.Particularly supra-and subnational dimensions of heritage and their interconnections characterize the notion of the concept in the documents. 30In this scalar logic, the EC constructs a European heritage from a subnational heritage-and is often silent about its "internal competitor," the national meanings and narratives of heritage. 31Indeed, "the national" has been, and commonly still is, the most well-known, fostered, and institutionally transmitted level and framework of meanings of heritage in modern societies.

Thematic Areas in the EC's Heritage Discourse
The conceptualizations of heritage described above are flexibly used to enhance diverse policy goals in the data.In the following, the semantic contexts of the uses of the concept are categorized into seven thematic areas that are, however, interconnected in various ways.

Nature, Environment, and Biodiversity
Natural heritage is discussed in the data from the very beginning.In the 1970s this discussion mainly focused on a perceived need to protect specific biotypes, such as seas, forests, or coastal nature.In these early documents, protection of the natural heritage as such, however, occasionally seems to be a secondary aim overshadowed by attempts to improve living conditions in certain European regions without harming their natural environment.After the 1970s, the EC's policy 30.See ibid.
31.See Monica Sassatelli, "The Arts, the State, and the EU: Cultural Policy in the Making of Europe," Social Analysis 51, no. 1 (2007): 28-41.discourse started to increasingly focus attention to the environment as a broader entity in which nature, habitation, industry, and heritage merge.This phenomenon echoes the Club of Rome's report "The Limits to Growth" (1972), which simulated the world's economic and population growth in the framework of finite supply of resources to find sustainable solutions for the future.
The report obtained considerable global attention and lead to rethinking the governance of environmental issues from a broader perspective when, for example, environment is altered.In Architectural heritage still had a strong emphasis in the EC's heritage discourse in the 1980s and 1990s, but the focus of the discourse changed slightly.In the 1980s, it was increasingly discussed in relation to its potential to increase tourism and thereby boost economic development.
In the 1990s, the architectural heritage was also connected to strengthening a sense of place specific to individual cities and to reinforcing their urban identities that, in turn, could be used to increase tourism.Since the 1990s, the EC's heritage discourse has also focused attention on the industrial heritage as a part of the urban environment; its preservation and conservation is explained to serve broader urban development by, for example, recycling disused industrial sites and simultaneously improving the local image, attracting visitors, and creating employment.
In the late 1990s, the EC's interest in human habitats broadened to also cover the rural environment.Like urban environments, rural areas were perceived as including specific features worth preserving.The need to preserve the rural heritage is referred to in the EC's cultural policy documents, but it is mainly discussed in the EC's other policy sectors.Indeed, EU agricultural policy can be interpreted as an important arena for the EC's heritage discourse, as the concerns for rural heritage have been repeatedly brought out since the mid-1990s.The discussion on rural heritage is motivated by attempts to regenerate declining agricultural areas by making them "productive" through rural tourism and by upgrading their image (and products) with the help of their heritage value.More recently, the promotion of rural heritage is also connected to enhancing sustainability of rural areas in Europe.
Thus, the semantics of the concepts of heritage in this thematic area extend from architecture and old buildings to broader urban and industrial areas, also covering rural living environments in the 1990s.This semantic change and the extension of the EC's interest in the heritage value of human habitats follow the structural changes of European societies at the end of the last century.During those decades, cultural tourism became an increasingly important sector in many European societies, while heavy industry drastically declined in several former industrial cities.Similarly, the transformation of agricultural production and the development of intensive farming created for the EC a challenge of how to compensate the economic difficulties of those rural areas that were not able to adapt to these changes.As one of the political responses to the changes, the EC has emphasized the heritage value of rural areas in Europe and turning the difficulties of these areas into a potential in another sector-heritage preservation and tourism.

Economy and Employment
The EC's heritage discourse is thoroughly intertwined with attempts to enhance economic development in the EU.This thematic area reflects an instrumental understanding of heritage in which its promotion and preservation are important due to its potential to foster economic interests, such as employment and competitiveness.Tourism is one of the core heritage-related industries addressed in the EC's heritage discourse since the beginning of the 1980s.The Community Policy on Tourism (1984) and its preparatory documents bring out heritage as "a valuable asset" and "a source of wealth" that should be better utilized in the European tourism industry. 34This policy particularly emphasizes the architectural heritage-"historic and artistic monuments"-that serves 34.European Commission, "The Community Policy on Tourism," Official Journal of the European Communities C115 (1984): 2-27.as a "magnet for millions of tourists every year." 35Due to tourist flows within and from outside Europe and tourists' interest in heritage, "the work undertaken to preserve this shared heritage therefore also has a more directly economic aspect," as the EC states. 36The claims for preserving heritage and increasing the economic impact of tourism are interdependently linked in the EC's policy discourse.On the one hand, the EC brings out its concern about the decline and the "sorry state" 37 of the architectural heritage in Europe and demands that it should be preserved and conserved to sustain and increase touristic interest in it.On the other, touristic flows are perceived to endanger heritage by eroding it and causing challenges to its preservation-and to the attempts to increase tourism.
As a part of its interest in tourism, the EC emphasizes heritage as a source for creating new jobs and regenerating declining industries in regressive regions and among regressive professions, such as craftsmen, offering employment particularly for young people.The Community Policy on Tourism (1984) already brought out the economic significance of heritage to rural regions in terms of creating new tourism-related jobs.In the 1990s and 2000s, this emphasis strengthened and became a repeated element in the EC's rural policy.Since 2007, the EC has allocated funds for the conservation and upgrading of rural heritage to boost the economic growth of rural areas.The EC's interest in conserving urban and industrial heritage in declining urban regions reflects a similar instrumental approach to heritage.In the policy documents with which the EC seeks to enhance 35.Ibid, 23. 36.Ibid, 6. regional development, heritage turns into a resource that not only boosts economic well-being, but also is perceived to positively impact social well-being and citizens' overall quality of life.The EC's integrated approach to heritage in the 2010s-formulated into a communication Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for Europe (2014)-intertwines more extensively the economic aspects with the meanings and values of heritage.In the visions of this document, "heritage sites become public spaces that produce both social and environmental capital" while "the cities and regions that host them turn into drivers of economic activity, centers of knowledge, focal points of creativity and culture, places of community interaction and social integration; in short they generate innovation and contribute to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth." 38During the past few years, the EC has also emphasized similar aims in cooperative actions and projects with its third country partners.Thus, in the 2000s the idea of heritage is increasingly becoming a political vertex that enables gathering together and jointly promoting various socio-economic objectives of the EC.

Agricultural Products and Foodstuffs
The EC's heritage discourse focusing on agricultural products and foodstuffs has steadily increased since the late 1990s.This thematic area brings together discussions on agriculture; landscape; rural, cultural, and natural heritage; communal dimensions of heritage; and regeneration and economic development of rural areas.This kind of integrative approach reflects the Council of Europe's European Landscape Convention (2000) that treats cultural and natural heritage as intertwined phenomena.The EU's measures in protecting the specificity of certain agricultural products are based on the Council Regulation on the Protection of Geographical Indications and 38.European Commission, Towards an Integrated Approach, 5. Products and Foodstuffs (1992).This regulation enables agricultural producers and processors to apply to have their product or foodstuff entered into the register of protected designations of origin (PDO) or protected geographical indications (PGI).

Designations of Origin for Agricultural
Although the regulation itself does not explicitly refer to heritage, the PDO and PGI applications published by the EC define agricultural products and foodstuffs as heritage using conceptualizations such as gastronomic and culinary heritage.They include rich discussions on its diverse dimensions and describe in detail the materiality of the products, production methods, and locations in which the products are produced or processed.The applicants present both products and traditional production methods as heritage by emphasizing their roots far back in time and the generational ties in their transmission from the past to the present.In these documents, the ideas of traditionality, originality, and authenticity define the notion of heritage framing the rural in nostalgic terms. 39This kind semantic emphasis seeks to produce added value for products and production methods that may be threatened by the economic pressure of modernization and increasing efficiency of agricultural production.
Inclusion in the PDO and PGI registers functions as an official indication of the originality and authenticity of the products and, thus, brands them accordingly.The brand logic of the registers is closely related to both the applicants' and the EC's economic interests.In general, both the PDO and PGI follow the logic of competition, which is a common means to govern national and local 39.For a further discussion on links between heritage, place, embodiment, and nostalgia see, for example, Sharon Macdonald, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (London: Routledge, 2013).actors within the EU policy.This logic relies on the EC's power to grant funds, desired awards, or labels to sub-European actors based on their competition for them.
The PDO and PGI applications commonly focus on describing the local, or even microlocal, character of the proposed agricultural or culinary heritage.The EC's discourse on the originality of the products and foodstuffs frames them as both "authentic products from a particular geographical area" and at the same time "a part of Europe's heritage," as the Green Paper on Agricultural Product Quality claims. 40Thus, the documents dealing with agricultural products and foodstuffs exemplify in particular how the local and European dimensions of heritage intertwine in the EC's policy discourse.The logic of building "the European" from a diversity of local cultural features is commonly used in EU cultural policy and the identity political discourses included in it. 41Moreover, the PDO and PGI registers are examples of governmentalization of culture and cultural Europeanization that extends to the sector of agriculture.

Promotion of Societal Development and Stability
The EU has multilevel cooperation agreements and initiatives with non-member countries.The forms of this cooperation range from single projects with a specific focus to broad assessments of  2004), the EC has produced numerous progress reports and more informal reviews on the implementation of this policy in third countries.These reports and reviews commonly include a section that discusses the state of national heritage legislation and the adoption of international heritage conventions, such as the UNESCO and Council of Europe conventions on heritage, diversity of cultural expressions, and cultural rights.Thus, in these reports and reviews, heritage is approached from the point of view of legal frameworks.Moreover, they describe diverse heritage-related conflicts and challenges in these countries and suggest measures for solving them.In these documents, heritage is perceived as an instrument through which unstable communities may create economic development, trust, and dialogue between different groups-and, thus, enhance stability.Although the EC discourse treats heritage in post-conflict regions, such as the Balkans, as an arena for reconciliation, the implementation of the EC policies and initiatives that aim to use heritage for reconciliation has faced various challenges.For instance, in Serbia, the EU's Regional Programme for Cultural and Natural Heritage in South East Europe has caused clashes between local, national, and European interests and, thus, eventually reduced possibilities for reconciliation and regional cooperation. 42sides increasing stability in European neighborhoods, the EC has supported "various activities to preserve and protect Europe's cultural heritage" as they are "vital for achieving the Community's cohesion and solidarity objectives," as the EC's Communication on Services of General Interest in Europe claims. 43The EC enhances these aims for example, through solidarity aids that since the 1990s have often been used for conservation of cultural heritage in Europe in the case of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods.The EC has also included heritage in the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, created in 2001.Its civil protection policy seeks to primarily protect people, but also focuses attention on protection of the environment and property, including cultural heritage, in the case of natural and man-made disasters.Heritage is treated in this policy as part of humans' core living conditions that therefore needs special protection.
In this thematic area, the idea of heritage is filled with meanings that emphasize it as a symbolic space for conflict-solving, encountering other people, and reconstructing injured communities.It serves in the EC's policy discourse, thus, as a "soft" political means-or as "soft power"-to stabilize Europe and its neighboring countries and their relationships.Since the 1990s, the EC has created various policies to govern European television, radio, and film industries.In the documents, the "products" of these industries are commonly referred to as heritage-often as a European heritage-that has to be promoted, safeguarded, and more efficiently circulated in the global market to compete with their implicit, and sometimes also explicit, threat: the American television and film industry. 44In the EC's policy discourse, the European audiovisual sector is perceived as fragmented in terms of both its production and cultural framework.On one hand, this fragmentation is explained as resulting in features such as culturally and linguistically diverse expressions and independent production industries that positively characterize the European audiovisual heritage.On the other hand, and due to these features, this heritage "struggles to match the high competitiveness of its American counterpart." 45 cinematographic works are a source of historical information about European society.They are a comprehensive witness to history of the richness of Europe's cultural identities and the diversity of its people.Cinematographic images are a crucial element for learning about the past and for civic reflection upon our civilisation.In order to ensure that the European film heritage is passed down to future generations, it has to be systematically collected, catalogued, preserved and restored.In addition, European film heritage should be made accessible for educational, academic, research and cultural purposes, without prejudice to copyright and related rights. 47 respond to these aims, the EC recommended in this communication setting up special institutes in each Member State for preserving and promoting film heritage at the national level.In this thematic area, the idea of heritage is, thus, closely linked with the national audiovisual productions that are understood to form a European film heritage together.The EC's discourse on audiovisual heritage is about an interplay between content and medium.On one hand, films and television and radio programs are defined as an audiovisual heritage as such.On the other, they are treated as audiovisual tools for mediating cultural contents perceived as heritage.Both are related to one of the key concerns in the EC's heritage discourse: access to heritage.This emphasis is accentuated along with the development of digital technology and its potential to cross borders.While in the 1990s the EC's policy discourse on audiovisual heritage reflected general discussions on the information society and multimedia as its "new" medium, by the end of the 1990s the discourse had extended to a "European heritage provided in the digital environment" 48 and to a digital heritage.The development and perceived possibilities of digitalization in the 2000s turn the EC's discourse on audiovisual heritage into a detailed discussion on various technical and juridical hindrances, such as license and copyright issues, that prevent freer access and distribution of digitized cultural contents.The EC's attempts to provide broad access to a European cultural heritage and to itself function as its provider is concretized in Europeana. 49e EC's efforts to remove diverse technical and juridical hindrances and increase access to heritage through digital technologies can be interpreted as attempts to coin the idea of a "common European cultural space"-a concept that is used in several EC policy documents as both a context and an aim of policies.Appreciation of European audiovisual heritage and the emphasis on digital technologies as their distribution channel offer the EC an effective means to further cultural integration in Europe-to teach Europeans and to discuss who they are, as the quotation above suggests.

European Identity and Integration
The fundamental aim in the EC's heritage discourse is to create citizens' sense of belonging to Europe and European identity and make their attitudes toward European integration positive.In the data, the notion of a European heritage is presented as the basis of a European identity under construction since the late 1970s.
As already shown in previous categories, the EC's policy discourse refers to various cultural forms and practices and natural environments as a European heritage.This heritage is often connected to certain values and political principles, or even explicitly defined as a "common heritage of ideas and political traditions," 50 such as democracy and protection of human rights.In the data, the geographical scope of this common European heritage transforms through the decades.While in the 1970s the scope was explicitly in Western European heritage, the political changes that took place after the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the so-called Eastern Enlargement commonly expected that a certain common European cultural heritage exists and is shared by both the candidate countries, and "old" and "new" Member States.This discourse can be perceived as a performative act through which the "Europeanness" of the candidate countries and "new" Member States was argued and the enlargement and political integration of the EU was culturally justified.
In general, phrases referring to a common heritage, a European heritage, or Europe's heritage are repeated in the EC's policy documents without further discussion on why they are perceived as such.The repetition commonly functions as a rhetorical means to assure the broad European cover of the policy and the importance of the issues at hand.Since the 1990s, the documents have also repeatedly referred to the treaties of the Union and their frequently phrased aim of ensuring "that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced."Repetition is a banal tool for creating and maintaining the ideas of a common European heritage, identity, and unity. 51

Heritage as a Contradictory and Ritualist Process
On the basis of our analysis, heritage can be depicted as a contradictory process.The contradictions and tensions of the concept turn heritage policies into contact zones between different heritage logics, simultaneously overlapping and competing against one another. 52These intertwined 51.See also Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).52.Chiara De Cesari, "Thinking through Heritage Regimes," in Heritage Regimes and the State, ed.Regina F. Bendix, Aditya Eggert and Arnika Peselmann (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2012), 399-413, here 404-405; Markus Tauschek, "The Bureaucratic Texture of tensions can be recognized in our data as intersections between the seven thematic areas.These tensions form primarily around space, time, and agency.In all of them, contradictions between the intrinsic and instrumental value of heritage are embedded.
In the EC's heritage discourse, the spatial dimensions of heritage range from global to micro-local.When dealing with nature or human habitats, the documents from the 1970s often refer to "the common heritage of mankind" that in principle unites all humans who live on Earth.
For example, wild fauna or the seabed are presented as common heritage relevant to all people.
Used in this way, heritage has a strong inclusive connotation that can form a basis for dialogical communication and possibly create some semblance of cohesion on a wide spatial scale. 53The clearest examples of specific, micro-local heritage are instead from the thematic area of agricultural products and foodstuffs that very strictly identifies the origin of products in space.
Consequently, this exclusive process constructs certain foodstuffs as the heritage of a very limited group of people.Both general and specific dimensions of heritage are discussed in the data when dealing with cooperation with third countries.On one hand, common features, interdependence, shared values, and affinity between cultures are pointed out by referring to historical, political, and economic ties between Europe and third countries.On the other hand, cooperation is characterized by the heterogeneity and specificity of heritage.The tension between status quo and development in the EC's heritage discourse brings out the key role that time has in the processes of heritage.The EC's heritage discourse focuses on introducing different patterns for both preserving and developing heritage.On one hand, stability and constancy are communicated by emphasizing the preservation of heritage with verbs such as protect, conserve, safeguard, and maintain.If the heritage is damaged or deteriorated, the need to restore it is emphasized as a way to regain stability.Thus, heritage is considered valuable and influential as such, because of what it is.Simultaneously, the development of heritage is emphasized due to its instrumental value.To communicate development, the documents claim that it is important to promote and foster people's access to heritage.In areas with scarce resources, policies urge the "exploitation" of heritage to promote economy, employment, and tourism.
The tension between taking resources and bringing added value discursively constructs heritage as something that possesses its own agency. 54In the data, discussions on allocation of money and/or assistance to protect, preserve, and develop heritage illustrate how heritage can take resources.The same process makes visible contradictory relations between human beings and heritage.Humans safeguard heritage by allocating money and giving assistance, but human action also threatens heritage (and simultaneously also human beings): military conflicts, pollution, as well as tourism can damage or deteriorate it.However, the EC's heritage discourse commonly emphasizes the added value brought by heritage.First, in the spirit of seeing culture as an economic factor, heritage is expected to act as a motor of socio-economic development. 55Second, and not less importantly, the promotion of awareness concerning heritage is assumed to enhance citizens' sense of belonging to the EU.Despite these contradictions and tensions, heritage is often discussed in the EC's documents as something self-evident.In them, heritage is formed as a "ritualist" process 56 by continuous repetition of the concept.Despite-or actually due to-its imperceptible and banal nature, repetition itself forms an influential basis for how societies work nowadays.It contributes to the formation and maintenance of communities and "normality" of everyday life. 57Since banality makes societal processes unnoticeable, they can easily be legitimized as natural, something that just takes place.When heritage becomes a ritualist process, its value(s)-or what makes something a heritage-do not need to be argued or explained, as they are taken for granted.
In ritualizing heritage, the policy documents as a media play an important role.Although it is possible to make an analytical distinction between substance (heritage) and the medium (policy documents), in practice both are parts of the social practices that form meanings.Policy documents as a medium give to (the idea of) heritage an official and legal framework that performatively constructs heritage as an entity that emerges and is maintained in the policy discourse through repetition and continuous appeals to its value(s) and significance.Repetition can thus be seen as a 57.E.g., Billig, Banal Nationalism.
way to naturalize the position of heritage and highlight its relevance in the EU and its different policy sectors.

The EC's Heritage Discourse in the Context of EU Integration
In both implicit and explicit EU cultural policy, the concept of heritage develops in the context of and in accordance with the intertwined phases of European integration and processes of Europeanization.Europeanization can be defined as international socialization where formal and informal rules, procedures, policies, and norms are constructed, diffused, and institutionalized in the spheres of EU integration.These rules, procedures, policies, and norms have first been defined at the EU level and then incorporated into Member States' domestic institutions and policies as a reconfiguration of cultures and identities. 58In EU integration, three partly overlapping aspects of Europeanization can be depicted.They are also reflected in the EC's approach to heritage and the evolution of the EU's heritage policy.Second, the expansion of the meanings and uses of the concept of heritage in the EC's policy discourse during the last two decades has taken place in the context of cultural Europeanization; the broadening of European integration from economic and political spheres to also encompass culture. 59Accordingly, the idea of a European cultural heritage is fostered in the EC's discourse to legitimize and justify cultural integration in the EU.The same aims are also increasingly furthered through the EC's research policies.For example, the current priority area of "memory and heritage" in the EU's research funding schemes for humanities 60 seeks to produce research on-and thus also discursively and performatively create-a European cultural identity and communality.
9. Evangelia Psychogiopoulou, "Conclusion: Culture and the European Union," in Cultural Governance and the European Union: Protecting and Promoting Cultural Diversity in Europe, ed.Evangelia Psychogiopoulou (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 237-282, here 245.10.Tuuli Lähdesmäki, "The EU's Explicit and Implicit Heritage Politics," European Societies 16, no. 3 (2014): 401-421.strategies, 11 and thus, these funding instruments function as important implicit EU heritage policies.Since the late 1990s, the EC has launched several cultural programs and cooperative initiatives that explicitly focus on preserving and promoting heritage.The earliest of them is the community action program Raphael (1997-2000).The Council of Europe's European Heritage Days has been organized in cooperation with the EC since 1999 and the Europa Nostra Awards for Cultural Heritage have been awarded in cooperation with the EC since 2002.Europeana, a European digital library, archive, and museum, was initiated by the EC in 2005.The EC's newest flagship heritage initiative, the European Heritage Label, was turned into an official EU action in 2011.These ongoing heritage initiatives focus on promoting heritage by increasing its visibility and accessibility, but do not function as funding instruments as such.The EC communication Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for Europe (2014) is the first broader EU policy document with an explicit focus on heritage.
11.European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for Europe, COM(2014) 477 final, 22 July 2014.Brussels: European Commission.political technology, in the context of economic and political EU integration and enlargement. 12 12. Cris Shore and Susan Wright, "Policy: A New Field for Anthropology," in Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, ed.Cris Shore and Susan Wright (London: Routledge, 1997), 3-39, here 12; Claske Vos, "European Integration through 'Soft Conditionality': The Contribution of Culture to EU Enlargement in Southeast Europe," International Journal of Cultural Policy 23, no.6 (2017): 675-689.13.Clive Barnett, "Culture, Policy and Subsidiarity in the European Union: From Symbolic Identity to the Governmentalisation of Culture," Political Geography 20, no. 4 (2001): 405-426.14.Gerard Delanty, "The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Europe: On the Cultural Significance of Europeanization," International Review of Sociology 15, no. 3 (2005): 405-421.
Newman and John Clarke, Publics, Politics and Power: Remaking the Public in Public Services (London: Sage, 2009), 26. 26.Sassatelli, Becoming Europeans: Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies, 20; Lähdesmäki, "Politics of Tangibility, Intangibility, and Place."thus,reflect or are already the result of negotiations drawn together by an officer or officers at the EC.Moreover, the EC's policy discourse and conceptual choices reflect those of other international organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe.Although our research does not include a comparative analysis of the concepts or discourses used by other organizations, it can be said that the Council of Europe in particular has had a major influence on the development and conceptualization of EU policy discourse.The Council's rhetorical formulations and interest areas have often been absorbed into the EU's policy discourse and their goals with only a short delay, particularly in questions related to culture.27 27. Sassatelli, Becoming Europeans: Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies, 43; Kiran K. Patel, "Introduction," in The Cultural Politics of Europe: European Capitals of Culture and European Union since the 1980s, ed.Kiran K. Patel (London: Routledge, 2013), 1-15, here 6.
1982, the EC suggested including evaluation of direct and indirect effects on cultural heritage in the directive concerning environmental effects of certain public and private projects.Since then, evaluation of effects on cultural heritage has been included in the EU's Environmental Impact Assessment Directive.EU environmental policy strengthened after 1992 when the Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora was approved.This directive includes a plan to set up a European ecological network of special areas of nature conservation under the title Natura 2000.In the same year, the EC launched the LIFE Programme as a funding instrument for environment and climate action.The policy documents of both actions bring out the importance of preserving natural heritage.During recent years the EC's environmental policy has broadened due to the EC's interests in biodiversity and sustainable development.This emphasis strengthened particularly after 2011, when the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 was approved.In the EC's communications on this strategy, safeguarding natural and cultural heritage forms an important part of a broader aim of sustaining ecosystems and habitats and fostering ecological interaction between humans and nature.Moreover, the ideas of safeguarding heritage and promoting sustainability are closely linked to economic sustainability in the EC's discourse-indicating an intertextual transmission of rhetoric between different discourses.The core aims are to prevent wasting of natural resources and spoiling of ecosystems and habitats and thereby promote and sustain economic development, as the following quotation from the EC's communication indicates: Target 2 focuses on maintaining and enhancing ecosystem services and restoring degraded ecosystems by incorporating green infrastructure in spatial planning.This will contribute to the EU's sustainable growth objectives . . .and to mitigating and adapting to climate change, while promoting economic, territorial and social cohesion and safeguarding the EU's cultural heritage. 32Although the EC has considered certain parts of nature and the environment as heritage since the 1970s, its policy discourse does not specify what makes them such.Naming certain parts of nature and the environment as heritage is a performative act that seeks to legitimize diverse political actions, such as preservation of environment or transformation of its uses, suggested or directed in the policies.The temporal transformation of the policies in this thematic area indicates how the semantic contexts of the concept of natural heritage expand from the 1970s focus on clearcut biotypes to the present decade's emphasis on multifaceted sustainability.Programs and directives seeking to govern nature and environment as heritage in Europe can be interpreted as 32.European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, "Our Life Insurance, Our Natural Capital: An EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020," COM(2011) 244 final, 3 May 2011.Brussels: European Commission.acts of governmentalization of culture or cultural Europeanization seeking to produce and establish an idea of a common European natural space, understood simultaneously as a common European cultural space through its heritage value.The purpose of such acts is to strengthen European integration.Human HabitatsDiverse documents in the data deal with various living environments and preservation of their material traits.These human habitats range from agricultural landscapes to industrial areas.The heritage value of human habitats has interested the EC since the 1970s, when this interest focused particularly on architecture.In the Commission Recommendation to Member States Concerning the Protection of theArchitectural and Natural Heritage (1974), architecture is viewed as a humanmade counterpart to nature.In this document, architectural heritage is stated as reflecting Europe's cultural identity and being a factor that determines the quality of life.In the 1970s, the EC perceived architectural heritage in Europe as "seriously threatened by decay and disappearance" 33 and, hence, its policy discourse emphasized its protection and conservation.The impetus for the EC's emphasis on protecting both architectural and natural heritage in the 1970s stemmed from the UNESCO World Heritage Convention adopted in 1972.Besides joining this convention, the EC recommended that the member states should support the Council of Europe's initiative for the 33.European Commission, "Commission Recommendation of 20 December 1974 to Member States concerning the Protection of the Architectural and Natural Heritage," 75/65/EEC, Official Journal of the European Communities L 21/23 (1975): 21-22, here 21.The EC also considered natural heritage to be threatened.European Architectural Heritage Year in 1975, which was intended to mark the beginning of a vast movement to preserve and restore the architectural heritage in Europe.
40.European Commission, "Green Paper on Agricultural Product Quality: Product Standards, Farming Requirements and Quality Schemes," COM(2008) 641, 15 October 2008, Brussels: European Commission.41.See, e.g., Reinhart Johler, "Local Europe: The Production of Cultural Heritage and the Europeanisation of Places," Ethnologia Europaea 32, no. 2 (2002): 7-18; Lähdesmäki, "Politics of Tangibility, Intangibility, and Place."societal development in both EU candidate and third countries.This cooperation focuses on enhancing societal development, civil society, democratic structures, and stability in the partner countries.Promotion and preservation of natural and cultural heritage is commonly included in this cooperation.In general, the EU candidate and third countries have been able to participate in some EU community programs in the field of culture, such as the European Capital of Culture, as it has been perceived as a sector that unites people regardless of the institutional borders of the Union and as a sector in which the cooperation may precede further forms of cooperation in other policy sectors.The increase in cooperative projects with external countries reflects the EU's increasing attention to external relations during the 2000s.Related to the European Parliament Resolution on the European Neighbourhood Policy ( Vos, "Negotiating Serbia's Europeanness: On the Formation and Appropriation of European Heritage Policy in Serbia," History and Anthropology 22, no. 2 (2011): 221-242.43.European Commission, Communication from the Commission: Services of General Interest in Europe, COM(96) 443 final, 11 September 1996, Brussels: European Commission.
Since the 1990s, the EC has launched several media programs that, among other aims, seek to enhance the development and distribution of the European audiovisual heritage and training of professionals in this field.A broader goal of these programs has been to "promote public familiarity with such [European audiovisual] works and raise the profile of Europe's film heritage." 46The EC's policy 44.See also Christopher Gordon, "Culture and the European Union in a Global Context," The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 37, no 1 (2007): 11-30.45.European Commission, Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and the Council Concerning the Implementation of a Programme of Support for the European Audiovisual Sector (MEDIA 2007), COM(2004) 470 final: 3, 14 July 2004.Brussels: European Commission.46.European Commission, "Implementation of a Programme Encouraging the Development and Distribution of European Audiovisual Works -Media II -Development and Distribution (1996 to 2000)," Official Journal of the European Communities C197 (1999): 6. discourse on audiovisual heritage is an example of the identity politics of the EU, as the following quotation from the EC's follow-up to the Commission Communication on Certain Legal Aspects Relating to Cinematographic and Other Audiovisual Works (2004) indicates: 47.European Commission, "Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on the Follow-up to the Commission Communication on Certain Legal Aspects Relating to Cinematographic and Other Audiovisual Works (Cinema Communication) of 26 September 2001," Official Journal of the European Union C 123 (2004): 1-3.
of the Union in the 2000s broadened the spatial scope of what is included in the notion of a European heritage in the EC's discourse.The EC's policy discourse on the Eastern Enlargement 50.European Commission, Memorandum on the accession of the European Communities to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, COM(79) 210 final, 54. Laurajane Smith, "Discussion," in Heritage Regimes and the State, ed.Regina F. Bendix, Aditya Eggert, and Arnika Peselmann (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2012), 389-395, here 391; Emma Waterton, Politics, Policy and the Discourses of Heritage (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

First
, the evolution of the concept of heritage in the EC's discourse is related to the general development of the EU from an economic to a political union.An example of this transition is the 58.Claudio M. Radaelli, "Whither Europeanisation?Concept Stretching and Substantive Change," European Integration Online Papers 4, no.8 (2000): 1-27, here 3-7; Monica Sassatelli, "European Cultural Space in the European Cities of Culture," European Societies 10, no. 2 (2008): 225-245; Frank Schimmelfennig, "NATO Enlargement: A Constructivist Explanation," Security Studies 8, no.2-3 (1998): 198-234; Frank Schimmelfennig, "International Socialization in the New Europe: Rational Action in an Institutional Environment," European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 1 (2009): 109-139.launch of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Union under the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, four decades after the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952.In this framework, heritage is increasingly embedded in the EU's foreign policy and treated as an arena for collaboration between the Community/Union and external countries, as our thematic area on the promotion of societal development and stability indicates.However, heritage makes visible the imbalances of this cooperation by reinforcing the EU's superior position as a provider of economic and/or technical assistance for the other parties in heritage preservation and conservation and as a promoter of heritage-related international agreements and a moral stand of protecting heritage.
National Patrimonial Policies," in Heritage Regimes and the State, ed.Regina F. Bendix, Aditya