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Security and heritage: alignments and interactions of two global leitmotivs

public.project.responsible_investigator_cria: Vera Lazzaretti

public.project.research_group: Circulation and Place-Making


public.project.keyword

Heritage | Security | Urban imagining | Everyday life

public.project.institution_funder

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)

public.project.state

public.project.open

public.project.start_date

01-10-2021

public.project.end_date

30-10-2027

public.project.reference

2020.02275.CEECIND


public.project.abstract

‘Security’ and ‘heritage’ constitute prominent but distinct research topics in anthropology. Scholars have demonstrated that security and heritage respectively are produced by historical, social and political contexts and forces. At the same time, both are individually productive of new socio-spatial formations, inasmuch as they both transform places and ways in which people relate to them. Their realms are deeply affective. Yet questions about the similar functioning of these two phenomena, and ways in which they may be co-produced and co-productive, remain to date almost unexplored. This project aims to unpack and theorise for the first time heritage and security as interconnected imaginaries and cross-fertilising processes that affect the everyday life of cities and citizens. It begins by undertaking an intensive anthropological analysis of a specific urban setting in north India—the historic centre of Varanasi/Banaras—where matters of security and heritage are pervasive. However, the wider aim of the project is to open up a new avenue of research and foster broader comparisons with other urban settings in South Asia and beyond.