Politics of Mobility and Stability in Authorizing European Heritage : Estonia’s Great Guild Hall

Abstract

Kaasik-Krogerus scrutinizes the European Heritage Label (EHL) as an authorized heritage discourse (AHD) in the making. She analyses how the discourse is formed in a politics of mobility and stability between the local, national, and European scales resulting from the interplay of europeanization (of the national and local) and domestication (of the European). The chapter asks how this politics of mobility and stability is conducted to manage the scalar dissonance in one of the sites, the Great Guild Hall in Tallinn, Estonia. Kaasik-Krogerus argues that the politics conducted in the exhibitions works in two controversial ways: legitimizing mobility and stability as natural and simultaneously challenging these as problematic. The analysis illuminates the dissonance between the national-scale intents and their consequences on the European scale concerning power relations, multiscalarity, and future imaginaries.