10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17344
This paper presents the most important findings of a research project on the expert processes that mediate in the construction of a sense of belonging through cultural heritage in the context of the Basque Country. Drawing from a theoretical framework based on Post-structuralism, Science and Technology Studies (STS), as well as other contemporary and classic sociological schools, this paper uses a qualitative approach (interviews and participant observations) that led to the analysis and description of the main expert processes involved in the construction of a relationship between cultural heritage and the community, group or society that considers it as part of their own identity.
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Daniel Muriel
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
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The Network of Experts and the Construction of Cultural Heritage. Identity Formation in Contemporaneity
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Essays
2017-07-20
2023-06-22
2017-07-20
2023-08-21
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TS
Daniel Muriel
2017/07/20
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17344
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University of Salford, Greater Manchester
2038-3460
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identity
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The Network of Experts and the Construction of Cultural Heritage. Identity Formation in Contemporaneity
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17344/16193
8
                                                                              Essay
                                                                                    23




The Network of Experts and the
Construction of Cultural Heritage
Identity Formation in Contemporaneity
Daniel Muriel
University of Salford, Greater Manchester (UK)



     Abstract: This paper presents the most important findings of a research
     project on the expert processes that mediate in the construction of a sense
     of belonging through cultural heritage in the context of the Basque Coun-
     try. Drawing from a theoretical framework based on Post-structuralism,
     Science and Technology Studies (STS), as well as other contemporary and
     classic sociological schools, this paper uses a qualitative approach (inter-
     views and participant observations) that led to the analysis and description
     of the main expert processes involved in the construction of a relationship
     between cultural heritage and the community, group or society that con-
     siders it as part of their own identity.

     Keywords: Actor-Network Theory; Basque Country; cultural heritage;
     experts; identity.

     Corresponding author: Daniel Muriel, Directorate of Social Sciences,
     University of Salford, Alleron Building, Salford, M5 4WT (UK). Email:
     d.muriel@salford.ac.uk.




1. Introduction

   We live in an epoch where the processes of meaning construction and
the modern institutions are under scrutiny. In the social sciences and the
humanities this climate of crisis is reflected on formulations such as the
postmodern condition (Lyotard 1984), the liquid modernity (Bauman
2000), the era of emptiness (Lipovetsky 2004), the risk society (Beck
1992) and the crisis of meaning (Berger and Luckmann 1995).
   Hence the question arises: How do we produce meaning – a sense of
belonging, identity, community – in a context where the production of
meaning is problematic? This text tries to answer this question by analys-
ing one of the social, political, and cultural mechanisms devised to over-

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
7 (1) pp. 23-50 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2017
24                                                           Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

come this conundrum at the beginnings of the post Second World War
era: cultural heritage. This article is then about how social meaning is
constructed in contemporary society.
    Focusing on the Basque society as an example, I will introduce in this
article how different expert processes mediate in the production of a
sense of belonging in contemporary society. My research was carried out
within the limited but powerful field of the network of experts that main-
tains, manages, and produces cultural heritage in the Basque Country.
This text focuses therefore on the description of the main expert process-
es that participate in the production of a very specific relation; the one
that is established between an object – cultural heritage, understood as
what belongs to us – and a subject – the heritage subject, understood as
the group, community or society that appropriates that cultural heritage.
    Firstly, I will outline the main characteristics of the study on which
this essay is based, detailing the research context and the methods that
were used during the investigation. I will explain why I chose the Basque
Country and the network of experts as the case and object of study for
my research and briefly introduce my theoretical and methodological ap-
proach: impressionist mapping. This approach explains the way I dealt
with the empirical data collected from the interviews and observations
and, above all, how the findings are presented from a narrative point of
view. The essay will then explore the relationship between cultural herit-
age and identity. There is a broadly extended belief among cultural herit-
age scholars, reflected on their works, which assumes that cultural herit-
age emerges as an identity reconstruction tool in an era precisely marked
by risk, nostalgia, and the crisis of meaning.
    From this starting point, the article presents a conceptual map with
the main expert mediations involved in the processes of identity for-
mation through cultural heritage. Based on new and original empirical
data from fieldwork carried out in the Basque Country, the map is intro-
duced as an analytical tool that can be used to describe various situations
within the framework of expert proceedings when it comes to dealing
with cultural heritage. Not only is it useful to describe the Basque case, it
also provides an example of impressionist mapping in action.


2. Network of Experts in the Basque Country and
Impressionist Mapping

2.1 Case Study and Methods

    In my research I studied how experts participate in the production of
a sense of belonging through the construction of cultural heritage in the
Basque Country (Spain). I chose the Basque case as a representative ex-
Muriel                                                                          25
ample on how identities are constructed in contemporary societies based
on three particular aspects1.
    Firstly, because identity has always been explicitly analysed at a politi-
cal, social and scientific level in the Basque Country. Secondly, because
the last three decades have witnessed a complex political development in
the Basque Country, which has culminated in the creation of an autono-
mous space of self-government, along with a specific social and cultural
framework for the Basque population (with the establishment of the Au-
tonomous Community of the Basque Country). This process has turned
the Basque society into a sociological laboratory, making the act of carry-
ing out well defined and delimited observations easier. Thirdly, mainly
due to the construction of this particular social reality, the Basque identi-
ty has fallen more recently within the meticulous scrutiny of experts,
moving away from a more traditional political activism. Thus, militancy
has not disappeared, but its role in reproducing and managing Basque
identities is not as important as it was in the past.
    When it comes to understanding the main reason why I decided to fo-
cus on the network of experts that work within the field of cultural herit-
age, it is fundamental to acknowledge the existence of a growing and con-
solidated expert culture. This plays an important role in defining and
mediating broad aspects of social reality2. In this respect, the expert cul-
ture could be understood as the institutionalisation of the practices, dis-
courses and products of expert knowledge in contemporary societies.
    According to this, the network of experts – at the same time the
product and foundation of expert culture – is a theoretical abstraction
that is used in this text to encompass the heterogeneous set of agents that
produce knowledge: on the one hand, the actors embodied in the role of
scientists, technicians, academics, specialists, consultants and other expert
agents; on the other hand, the non-human agents that join them, such as
methodologies, rules, regulations, discourses, methods, objects, tech-
niques, tools or experiences. They contribute to producing and managing
specific realities by mediating between the elements that constitute them.
It is outlined, thus, the idea of the network of experts as the fabric of ac-
tors, practices, protocols, methods, and technologies that helps create and
maintain realities from the point of view of the experienced accumulation
and application of knowledge.
    The fieldwork was carried out using qualitative methods such as semi-
structured personal interviews, a total of thirty, and two participant ob-

    1
      An excellent introductory work on the Basque society from a sociological
point of view can be found in Gatti, Irazuzta and Martínez de Albeniz (2005). For
a more classic approach see Pérez-Agote (2006).
    2 Several social theorists have highlighted the importance of expert knowledge
in the last decades: the post-industrial societies described by Touraine (1974) and
Bell (1976), the epistemic cultures of Knorr-Cetina (1999), the knowledge society
of Stehr (1994) or the expert systems in the works of Giddens (1991).
26                                                              Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

servations. The interviews focused on the experts’ day-to-day tasks, the
tools they used and the specific experiences they had in the heritage pro-
jects they were involved in. There were also more theoretical questions
about their notion of heritage and the link between heritage and identity,
but always as a way of observing how they handled those concepts in
their work.
    The observations consisted in studying the behaviour of different ex-
perts in projects related to heritage. The observation mentioned in this ar-
ticle consisted in following an expert who works at a hiking business
while he was designing and executing an official path between two
Basque localities. In the process, he highlighted different elements of her-
itage within the itinerary. The observation included helping him to place
some signs and interpretative panels, an interview about his job, and a
few informal meetings where we discussed his activities as a hiking tech-
nician, particularly about his ongoing project.

2.2 Impressionist Mapping of Social Mediations

    The research was carried out within a theoretical framework based on
Post-structuralism, Science and Technology Studies (STS), as well as oth-
er contemporary and classic sociological schools, with a particular focus
on Actor-Network Theory. Drawing on a notion of social reality as the ar-
ticulation of heterogeneous elements, this theoretical and methodological
framework understands agency as the multiple, distributed and dislocated
production of differences and transformations that can take a multitude
of forms: a determined agent, actor or figure, where the “distinction be-
tween the agential capacities of humans and nonhumans ceases to be
helpful” (Sayes 2014, 145). The proposal considers that the mediation –
the trace that is left by the agency – is the unit of observation in sociology
(Muriel 2016).
    The idea of mediation (Latour 2007; Hennion 2002) functions as a
guide that focuses our attention on the displacements, trajectories and
transformations that are constantly giving form to the social. It is a key
concept in the design and execution of sociological maps that sketch out
trajectories and circulations beyond the more traditional (although neces-
sary) spaces and objects. In short, if the social is defined as the articula-
tion of heterogeneous elements – the result of the different agencies that
compose it – then mediations are what configure the observable universe;
they leave traces that can be followed and studied, and from which we in-
fer everything else. John Law (2004, 161) defines “mediation” as “the
process of enacting relations between entities that are, as a part of that
process, given form”. These are entities and relations that did not pre-
exist, but are constituted in the moment that the process is carried out:

        Mediation is a turn towards what emerges, what is shaped and com-
     posed, what cannot be reduced to an interaction of causal objects and in-
Muriel                                                                      27
    tentional persons (Gomart and Hennion 1999, 226).

    All these notions are made operational in a critical approach that ad-
dresses the reality being studied from this sociological prism: the impres-
sionist mapping of social mediations. This impressionist mapping is de-
fined as the ordered accounting of a set of mediations that lead to a con-
crete social reality based on the articulation of diverse traces and impres-
sions. I attempt to reconcile two elements that in their intersection gener-
ate a lot of tension, if not a strong contradiction: mapping and impres-
sionism. One is meticulous, detailed, precise and figurative: a map of real-
ity; the other is composed of broad strokes, centred on appearance,
blurred prints, formalist: leaving traces of reality. Thus, this subterfuge is
built through simultaneous support from and leakage between these two
cornerstones.
    On the one hand, there is a sociology of mediations, based on con-
cepts developed by Actor-Network Theory (Latour 2007; Latour 2013a;
Law 2004) as well as other empirical tools, which permits us to construct
detailed maps of the social. The problem is that this leads to descriptions
that are strongly situated and localized. Given this difficulty, it is about
making a less detailed map, more abstract, making it manageable on a so-
ciologically acceptable scale. The leakage in this case is in the direction of
the mobile, the comparable, the standard, the theory. The mapping be-
comes impressionistic.
    On the other hand, there is a sociological impressionism (Simmel
2002; 2009; Frisby 1992; Zerubavel 2007), which permits us to focus on
the fundamental forms of the social without being constrained by the his-
torical, spatial and cultural specificities of concrete cases, while also being
a more useful tool for capturing the changing flow of the real. The main
pitfall of this approach is its connection with transcultural and ahistorical
formalism, with universalist and essentialist pretensions. All of these
characteristics are, however, smoothed over with mapping. The leakage
here is in the direction of the local, the historically situated, the case. The
latent formalism in impressionism becomes, this way, partially historical
and situated.
    Hence, the impressionist mapping is related to the efforts made by
some scholars within STS to avoid being trapped inside the tensions that
traverse what has been known as the “turn to ontology” inside the disci-
pline (Lynch 2013, 445). This particular map drawn in an impressionistic
fashion follows what Marres (2013, 423) identifies as an empirical con-
ception of ontology: “the issue of what the world is made up of, is in ac-
tuality decided through specific, historical, cultural, technological and
scientific interventions and as such, should be studied in empirical
terms”. Theory that only makes sense if it is enacted through an empirical
approach; an empiricism that is able to inform contingent, liminal, theo-
retical frameworks.
28                                                           Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)


3. Cultural Heritage and its Relationship with Identity

     In this section, I will show the links between identity and heritage that
are established by different social theorists. Considering the enormous
differences between authors and how they approach that relationship, I
do not directly address its nature: is heritage the mere expression of iden-
tity? Or does heritage participate in the promotion and creation of certain
identities? Even though I prefer to see heritage as part of the processes
and dispositifs that help produce identities, I simply want to highlight the
idea that continuously connects heritage with identity in the academic lit-
erature.
     In this sense, heritage is seen as part of a nostalgic response that,
throughout modernity, is taking over the feelings of society by force of
fundamental social changes. However, the last third of the 20th century is
a period of time when nostalgia and its rhetoric have become “almost ha-
bitual, if not epidemic” (Lowenthal 1985, 4), the moment in which
emerges a preservation mania (Samuel 1996, 139) and the “desperate de-
sire to hold on to disappearing worlds” (idem, 140). In turbulent times
for identity (Macdonald 2002), heritage would try to find points of an-
chorage, a way to face the issues of contemporary society that seeks to
“neutralise the instability of the social” (García Canclini 2001, 164).
     As an apparatus for reconstructing social meaning and as a nostalgic
response to the climate of crisis and decline, heritage, according to these
authors, allows the re-enactment of what belongs to a community and fa-
cilitates the production of a sense of belonging. According to this ap-
proach, heritage helps us make “links between past and present” (Mac-
donald 1997, 162), fostering the temporal connections that unite societies
through history. This provides stability to the group and its “collective
identity” (Arrieta 2007, 156) and heritage is considered as a tool in the
present for “the creation of new identification referents that articulate a
sense of belonging to a distinctive place, group or cause” (Anico 2009,
67). Heritage is, therefore, represented as a place where “some people
feel better, more rooted and more secure” (Howard 2003, 147).
     In this regard, heritage is seen as a powerful source of ethnic and cul-
tural meanings destined to constitute a nation (Hall 2005); nations that
construct their memory and identity by “selectively binding their chosen
high points and memorable achievements into an unfolding national sto-
ry” (Hall 2005, 25). Depicted as an entity that creates “a focus for ideas of
civic or national identity” (Hewison 1987, 84), heritage is invoked, espe-
cially from the governmental sphere, in order to promote social cohesion
(Mason and Baveystock 2009). Thus, heritage is playing a “decisive role
in the definition and assertion of cultural identities” (Anico 2009, 63).
     Heritage, then, is part of the processes that participate in the creation
of the ideas of society and community, of the possibility of sharing com-
mon ideas, feelings and meanings: cultural heritage is necessary for the
Muriel                                                                              29
reproduction of the “meaning we find when we live together” (García
Canclini 2001, 184). One of the interviewed experts clearly defines what
the heritage that is represented in her museum means to her, and how it is
considered for those who visit it:

       I understand that they take it as part of our culture, that is, here it is
    shown a part of what belongs to us (Marta, head of museum).

    Heritage is therefore conjugated in a plural form, because it always
makes reference to us. And as we are speaking about a possession, some-
thing that we have inherited, we consequently say: what is ours, what be-
longs to us. Thus, the debate on heritage is usually carried out in terms of
possession, in which the “possessive pronouns ‘my’ and ‘our’, ‘theirs’ and
‘yours’ are constantly deployed” (Howard 2003, 112). Heritage is, fur-
thermore, an explicit articulation of what belongs to us: “recognised, des-
ignated and self-conscious” (idem, 148). With regard to this, an attempt
to define cultural heritage could be as follows: the explicit articulation of
what belongs to us as individuals, citizens, a community, a group, a nation
or a society.
    Heritage is often put at the same level as identity in the discourse of
social scientists. An identity that remains in time and space and belongs
to someone: a subject, a group, a society. The relationship between herit-
age and identity is often taken for granted:

         How the links between identity and heritage are developed and main-
    tained, however, is an area that has not had much scrutiny in the heritage
    literature (Smith 2006, 48).

    That is the reason why this article explores how those links are pro-
duced and managed from the point of view of the experts who work with
cultural heritage. The aim of this paper shares Heinich’s (2011) proposal
to replace the why with the how, moving from an explicative sociology to
a comprehensive sociology in order to understand how cultural heritage is
made. Obviously, this approach does not exhaust all possibilities when it
comes to studying the creation of those links, but at least gives a valuable
insight into the issue. How the individuals and groups targeted by the ex-
perts’ operations react is something that has not been dealt with in this
text. In any case, the field of heritage makes possible to carry out a re-
search project on how identities are reflexively produced in contemporary
society.
30                                                              Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)


4. The Expert Mediation in the Construction of a Heritage
Relationship

    Experts conceptualise heritage in terms of a possession relationship:
their aim is to make individuals feel a set of symbolic and material objects
– heritage – as their own. It is the subject-object heritage relationship.
    The subject-object heritage relationship (shorten as the heritage rela-
tionship) can be defined as the relationship that is produced in the herit-
agisation processes from which the cultural heritage object and the sub-
ject who makes it his own emerge. It describes a relationship between a
subject who possesses – the group, the community, the nation, the socie-
ty, the individual, the citizen – and an object that is possessed – cultural
heritage, all of which entail a sphere of what is typical, of what belongs to
and define us.
    In the same way identities and subjectivities are not an a priori be-
cause they are produced as the consequence of complex processes, the
heritage relationship also relies on multiple and heterogeneous media-
tions: “objectivity and subjectivity are not opposed, they grow together
and they do so irreversibly” (Latour 1999, 214). Hence, we should not
understand this relationship in a canonical sense, that is, the existence of
an active subject (the groups) and a passive object (cultural heritage).
Both are entities with an active social existence.
    Heritage is not a cultural and social inheritance that is inevitability
transmitted in a spontaneous way. It demands hard work; experts deem
that cultural heritage is a reality at which they must work explicitly:

        That was the objective (...), to make people aware, make them know
     and give value to their own heritage, to those things they have in their
     homes (Indira, lecturer).

    That is the most important thing for the network of experts, to turn
cultural heritage into what belongs to us, to make individuals feel that the
legacies from the past “have become our very own” (Lowenthal 1998,
23). What comes below is mainly a description about how the network of
experts participates in the process of making identities through cultural
heritage (see table I), always in the context of the Autonomous Commu-
nity of the Basque Country. Following the Actor-Network Theory tradi-
tion, I tend to use the same language used by social actors, which does
not imply I agree with their opinions or I uncritically analyse their prac-
tice and discourse3. My main aim is to draw the map of expert mediations


    3 The experts’ point of view could be part of what Laurajane Smith call the
authorised heritage discourse (AHD), the theoretical abstraction used to address
the hegemonic discourse in the expert literature on heritage and the government
institutions that usually support it. Even though my research has only focused on
Muriel                                                                                    31
that they carry out during their participation in the construction of the
heritage relationship. This is a narrative mainly built from the point of
view of experts and all the definitions are based on their work as they de-
scribe it. I leave to the reader to judge their activity and the consequences
it might have.

                         MEDIATIONS                CHAINS OF               OUTCOME
                          INTENDED                MEDIATIONS
                             FOR

 ORIENTATION            Knowing and             Register: to             It names and
 TOWARDS                classifying             know what we             distinguishes
 THE OBJECT             cultural                have                     heritage
                        heritage

                        Protecting              Conservation: to         It gives
                        cultural                protect what we          continuity and
                        heritage                have                     preserves
                                                                         heritage


 ORIENTATION            Making cultural         Interpretation:          It gives
 TOWARDS                heritage                to make what we          meaning to
 THE SUBJECT            understandable          have                     heritage for
                                                understandable           the subject

                        Socialising             Activation: to           It socialises
                        cultural                make what we             heritage
                        heritage                have something           connecting it
                                                that can be              with the
                                                owned                    subject

Tab. 1 – Expert mediations in the construction of the subject-object heritage relationship.

4.1 To Know What We Have: The Register as a Process of
Naming and Distinguishing Heritage

    Completely focused on the selection of potential heritage, the first
step requires knowing what we have. According to experts, this step fo-
cuses on the task of making a register, which consists in the group of tax-
onomic mediations aimed at identifying, selecting, recording, and classify-


the expert side, I have found that some distinctions usually made between
authorised/dominant/expert and dissonant/subaltern/non-expert could be
revised. For more information on the AHD, see Smith (2006).
32                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

ing the different elements that are part of heritage. The register is a group
of routines, activities and practices that tries to give a name to heritage.
    It can be understood as a basic list, which gives an account of the
components that are part of a group, in this case, the elements than can
be labelled as heritage. The register distinguishes aspects of the sociocul-
tural inheritance in order to make them into objects that will be a recipi-
ent for subsequent actions. It is the expert mediation that starts the whole
process through which a group appropriates a particular reality:

         We have to know what we have. We have to know what we are dealing
     with (Marta, head of museum).

    This is how experts distinguish a particular reality – objects, buildings,
customs, traditions, histories, and practices – in order to transform it into
heritage. It constitutes a sine qua non condition for these experts; if we
do not know what we have, it will be very difficult to construct a heritage
relationship:

          If you enhance something you don't know, you are not enhancing it at
     all. Or rather, when we talk about heritage, the first step to enhance some-
     thing is to know it (Jaime, lecturer).

    Experts make inventories that originate from the knowledge available
on the total amount of elements that are potentially part of cultural herit-
age. Thus, data management systems are created, taking the shape of cata-
logues and repositories, which feed archives and databases. After all, cre-
ating a register is to translate part of the sociomaterial reality into data,
texts, codes, pictures and organised descriptions (based on categories
such as kind of heritage, location, or name). Therefore, a register trans-
forms the heritage reality into information that helps to construct inven-
tories.
    These catalogues and databases are the outcome of the efforts and re-
search done by experts. Transformed into manageable data (inscrip-
tions4), parts of the world (distinguished elements considered as heritage)
are moved to those centres of calculation that are museums, heritage cen-
tres, archives, libraries, and websites. Materialised as data repositories,
the inventories connect a reality that is difficult to cope with – a vast soci-
ocultural inheritance – with another one much more easily handled: lists
of ordered heritages. According to these experts, not only do inventories
help to know what we have, but they also turn what we possess into
something manageable and cognisable. From there, experts will be able


    4
      Inscription is “a general term that refers to all the type of transformations
through which an entity becomes materialized into a sign, an archive, a document,
a piece of paper, a trace. Usually, (…) inscriptions are two dimensional,
superimposable and combinable” (Latour 1999, 306).
Muriel                                                                                 33
to carry out more mediations.
    Furthermore, the expert production of inventories demands the com-
patibility between them. The power of expert knowledge and its growing
importance in contemporary society lies in, above all, its ability to manage
heterogeneous elements in order to organise and compare them in differ-
ent ways5:

         The task of unifying the inventories was very difficult for us (...). If we
    call it “tower house”, it’s “tower house”, not “tower”, not “stronghold”.
    So, that is the common language for the unification of languages. And
    then, in this way, all the inventories are compatible with each other (Sara,
    civil administration).

   It is the task of constructing common languages to make the seams of
heritage that are waiting to be utilised into a standard surface of action:

        The use of these thesauruses in the systems of information and dissem-
    ination of cultural heritage allows the normalisation of vocabularies among
    the cultural institutions and guarantees an agile and thorough recovery
    and exchange of data6.

    This is how experts work on heritage and issues related to identity
formation: making them, at the same time, manageable, comparable and
subject to singularisation. The expert knowledge facilitates, thus, the cre-
ation of registers that help find what is typical of a society through the
construction of an expert shared language. The register gives a name, in
an organised way, to heritage.

4.2 To Protect What We Have: The Conservation as the Process
of Preserving Heritage

    Once the aspects of the social and cultural inheritance which can be
part of cultural heritage have been identified and classified, experts con-
sider that it is necessary to protect them through a series of mediations
that belongs to the process of conservation. The task of conservation is
described by experts as the set of preserving mediations that seeks to pro-
tect, maintain and, eventually, restore the different elements which have
been identified as part of cultural heritage. The conservation is closely
tied to the material possibility through which a part of heritage might be
appropriated in the future by a society or a community:

        As regards conservation, we try that the following generations know
    the existing heritage (Iker, civil administration).

    5
      In this sense, for instance, see Latour (1999, 1990) or Latour and Woolgar
(1986).
    6 Source: http://tesauros.mcu.es/index.htm?operation=accept.
34                                                                      Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

    The future generations, then, are seen as virtual receivers of a heritage
that belongs to them as part of their cultural legacy. According to these
experts, this approach is justified by the moral imperative of protecting
heritage assets, as survivors of the vicissitudes of time, in order to avoid
their disappearance in the current context (Ballart Hernández and Juan i
Tresserras 2005). An example of heritage conservation can be found in
the activity of an expert geologist who worked inside the team that partic-
ipated in the conservation of an emblematic theatre in the city of Bilbao.
    The first step in this conservation process is the diagnosis, which anal-
yses and evaluates the object’s condition; in this case, a building. To this
end, the expert draws a map of materials (see figure 1), which consists in
translating the composition of the various types of rocks that are part of
the theatre's facade into a map.




                Figure 1. Map of materials. Source: Herrero and Gil (2000, 12).

    The diagnosis entails, then, two mediations that transform the ana-
lysed object: on the one hand, the diagnosis translates the object into a
flat surface which makes it easier to handle; on the other hand, the analy-
sis takes the object apart according to some criteria (in this case, type of
material) to create a surface of action that will guide the following steps
within the task of conservation. All these efforts point to the idea of keep-
ing the social flat (Latour 2007), by making different aspects of reality
manageable. The construction of a map of this kind is based on diverse
identification methods, ranging from a mere glance to more precise and
complex approaches:

         Sometimes you have all the information with a little splinter, however,
     in other situations is necessary to take a bigger sample or we turn to explo-
     ration techniques and we extract a specific sample, what we call a witness
     (John, lecturer, geologist).
Muriel                                                                        35
    On this occasion, the act of moving the building is literal: they directly
take samples from the theatre. Among the type of samples that can be
identified, there are the witnesses: pieces of rocks that, after an extraction
(a survey in their terminology), speak to experts about the properties of
the place from which it has been extracted. This is a movement that al-
lows the expert to establish the characteristics of the theatre’s materials
without pulling it out from its foundations or having to move the labora-
tories to its location. In this way, even the tiniest details of the object that
experts want to conserve are translated into a language that can be inter-
preted by them.
    Once a particular heritage has been mapped, experts assess the condi-
tion of its materials. Their aim is to determine the physical capacity of
that heritage to resist the passage of time and the elements which might
damage it. Added to the observation of the chemical, mineralogical and
petrological composition of materials – testing their resistance and dura-
bility, a study about the agents that cover the façade, agents who might
erode the theatre, is also carried out. Thus, it is possible to determine the
heritage’s condition – level of deterioration and pathologies – and its
prognosis.
    Those agents, organic and inorganic, become relevant for the expert
when techniques of visualisation appear and force them to emerge. In the
specific case of salt concentration, it is used the diffractometer, a tool for
analysis that shows the salt presence and its activity through spectrum
peaks (see figure 2).




               Figure 2. Diffractograms. Source: Herrero and Gil (2000, 8).
36                                                                Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

    The expert mediation identifies those elements that are flawed and al-
lows experts to act on the agents which put heritage in danger. If the first
part of the diagnosis is centred on what kind of material heritage is made
of, the second part consists in the delimitation of what can be under-
stood, strictly speaking, as heritage, discarding everything that pollutes it.
    All of it completes a diagnosis in which heritage is dissected as
bounded, as an element “with identifiable boundaries that can be
mapped, surveyed, recorded” (Smith 2006, 31). Even from the diagnosis
within the tasks of conservation, experts are giving shape to heritage. Af-
ter the diagnosis, experts can make recommendations to facilitate heritage
conservation: how to clean, repair, and protect it.
    Through this expert procedure that continually scrutinises, undresses,
classifies, and cares about every part of heritage anatomy, experts, in their
logic, are physically allowing the subjects who approach heritage to enjoy
it in the present as well as in the future. The conservation process gives
continuity to heritage by preserving it: it halts and, eventually, reverses
the passage of time.

4.3 To Make What We Have Understandable: The
Interpretation as a Process to Give Meaning to Heritage

    The interpretation is, for experts, the process that entails the media-
tions aimed at making heritage understandable to different groups in a
simple, attractive and adapted way. According to experts, the possibility
that people accept as their own a specific heritage – and the way they do
it – will depend, to a great extent, on the process of interpretation.
    Even though the process of making a register helps to select and dif-
ferentiate a vast inheritance by determining its most relevant elements
and by naming them, while the process of conservation is focused on pre-
serving that selection, they do not have, by themselves, any influence on
an experience of what is ours. As a series of operations mainly oriented to
the object of heritage (and not its subjects), both are practices which pro-
duce very technical raw knowledge and not very digestible:

         They give us that raw data, which is illegible for the general public,
     because it is very academic and people do not understand it. We trans-
     form that erudite text into something understandable, bringing it closer to
     the general public (Nadia, heritage management business).

    The interpretation is understood as a practice in which a guide, a na-
tive or an expert explains to a foreigner, a stranger or a novice the idio-
syncrasies of a place, a territory, or an object (Dewar 2000). Experts think
the subjects of heritage do not have the ability to automatically identify
that legacy. This is why they seek to convey that knowledge in an easy-to-
understand fashion:
Muriel                                                                                37
        I think all that information and all that knowledge must be communi-
    cated and transferred to the citizen in a very didactic and participative way
    (Markel, civil administration).

   Experts consider that the interpretation should be didactic in order to
decipher why a specific heritage is important for any subject: accessible,
empathic and attractive. Firstly, experts think that the interpretation
should be accessible. When a script that reflects the content expressed in
the interpretation of a particular heritage is carried out, it must contain
texts that can be easily understood and do not overwhelm its readers:

        It is not the same to write for a newspaper than to do it for an inter-
    pretation table: more or less, very simple phrases, very short; it must be
    easy to read and attract your attention (Joseph, hiking technician).

   All of this is part of the expert’s creed which claims that the heritage
subjects need to understand quickly and efficiently their heritage, without
apparent obstacles between them. The process of interpretation is all
about transforming the expert content into “understandable, accessible
and non-erudite texts” (Nadia, heritage management business).
   Secondly, a way to let the individuals who approach heritage partici-
pate in its interpretation is to awake their emotions and lead them to
known places in which they could easily recognise themselves or others:

        When we do the guide tours, (...) I particularly insist on (...) the
    workers’ life, especially because you can clearly see, in the paintings, the
    sacrifice made by these people (Elisabeth, head of museum).

    A very efficient method to make heritage understandable is then to
arouse the compassion and empathy of visitors. Experts seek to affect
people in the elaboration of scripts that interpret heritage, and try to
make those individuals identify more easily with the given representations
(Ballart Hernández and Juan i Tresserras 2005).
    Thirdly, experts state that the didactic interpretation should make
what is being interpreted more attractive. The expert’s narrative, which
differentiates what is relevant when it comes to interpreting a captivating
story for the public, is transformed:

        To invent stories, to write stories about what the expert tells us, to nar-
    rate a story that is attractive and beautiful for the public (Nadia, heritage
    management business).

    The idea of heritage emerges as something that can be easily under-
stood in an attractive way, closer to the logic of entertainment. The head
of a museum on the history of the Basque Country and its symbols relates
the procedure they followed in the making of a script that interprets its
heritage in a new way:
38                                                                   Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

        We said to them: “we should try to raise a smile once in a while” (...),
     we wanted something close to entertainment (...) without being Disney
     (Marta, head of museum).

    Choay (2007) negatively evaluates this kind of interpretations that uses
sounds, discourses and lights. Targeted at the general public, these inter-
pretations only work, according to her criteria, as a way “to distract and
divert” (idem, 197) the subjects from the heritage interpreted. However,
if we follow these experts’ assumptions, the interpretation that becomes
accessible, empathic and attractive, far from pushing away the subjects
from their heritage, it gets them closer: it involves people in their heritage,
attracted by interpretations that give meaning to it.
    Another way to tell what is relevant about a heritage relies on adapt-
ing the interpretation to the different kinds of individuals (Ballart Her-
nández and Juan i Tresserras 2005). Not only does the general public not
have to know the language used by experts in relation to heritage, but the
individuals who are part of that general public are also diverse and their
abilities to interpret the heritage they approach (and the way they do it)
might essentially vary depending on their age, level of education, general
culture, origins, relationship with the heritage visited, interest, or any oth-
er sociocultural variable:

         There are different targets of population and depending on who you
     are aiming at, the scope of the information varies. It depends on the level
     of knowledge or the visitor’s profile (...). It is not the same to do a guided
     tour with children than doing it with pensioners or with middle age people
     who went to college (Iker, civil administration).

    The scope and type of interpretations are adapted to the targets in
which experts divide the population. Although heritage always has a col-
lective dimension, this singularisation of population targets turns what
belongs to us into something that is more and more adapted to the micro
social or individual peculiarities.

         You put yourself in their shoes and try to make the product in a way
     that suits them. They are generally very different, but, well, you offer a di-
     versified pace of expositions and presentations because you want to reach
     everyone (Nekane, heritage management business).

    That seems to be the key of an adapted and diversified interpretation
in experts’ opinion: taking into account the heterogeneity of those at
whom is aimed, and, above all, putting themselves in the visitors’ shoes.
Experts maintain that the interpretation is not carried out in a unidirec-
tional way; it adapts itself to the diverse feelings and abilities of the tar-
geted subjects. The objective is simple: to augment the probability that
the interpretations given to the subjects are meaningful for them.
Muriel                                                                              39
4.4 To Socialise What We Have: The Activation as the Process
that Connects Subjects and Heritage

    Once what we have is made understandable, experts can undertake
the operations to socialise that reality already interpreted. Some of these
experts refer to this process as the activation, which connects heritage to
its subjects. It allows heritage to be visited, observed, assumed, con-
sumed, and experienced.
    The activation is understood by experts as the process in which herit-
age is socialised through a staging that connects it to the subjects who ap-
propriate that heritage. Creating a space or a reality that enables people
to approach representations of what is ours, the activation links – con-
structing them at the same time – heritage and groups. In this sense, the
activation is what belongs to us in action; it is a proposal of a particular
“world view” (Prats 2009, 80). Heritage is activated, according to experts,
through three ideal types: adding value to heritage, re-enacting experi-
ences of heritage, and standardising heritage.

Adding Value to Heritage

    The activation of heritage can be presented in different shapes, for in-
stance, the speech or the lecture, which allows a face to face interaction
with the individuals who attend:

        I brought an archaeological object, which I think it is, at least, 40.000
    years old (...). And everybody was “Ah, I want to touch it, then”. Well, I
    think this link with the past (...) is fundamental (Jaime, lecturer).

    When the very subject is the one who wants to touch that element, the
bond with the past is directly established, invoking a feeling of continuity
for the inhabitants of the locality. Furthermore, in experts’ opinion, an
extra value is added to this heritage: we are faced with a non-simulated
piece, an original.
    One of the most recurrent means to stamp a patina of authenticity to
heritage activations consists in the use of auratic elements, that is, com-
ponents of a particular heritage that are seen as authentic because they
are “imbued with the magic of having been there” (Macdonald 1997,
169). The notion of the auratic comes from the idea that the “presence of
the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” (Benjamin
2007, 220). This could be extended not only to objects, like archaeologi-
cal remains, but also to the spaces, the people and the activities they per-
form:

        We always tend to recover authentic spaces, (...), we do not create a
    Museum of Cheese (...) in this building that has nothing to do with tradi-
    tion or cheese. What we do is to go to the person who makes cheese, in
40                                                                Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

     the field, bonded with the activity of a person (...), and that seems more
     realistic to those who come to visit (Arnaldo, head of museum).

    However, stamping a patina of authenticity in a particular heritage
representation depends not only on the originals or the auratic objects
that can be collected; authenticity can also be obtained from the story
that is effectively being transmitted during heritage activations. It is not
important where the artefacts come from in a heritage staging, but they
should be capable of conveying a suitable message. In this sense, diverse
mediations are used to confer that authentic appearance to heritage: pre-
senting the narrative as if it were contrasted facts, eliminating dissonanc-
es, using realistic three-dimensional constructions, or utilising techniques
such as the audio guide, which ties the story seamlessly and avoids the
discussion with other visitors (Macdonald 1997).
    Whether auratic objects or not are shown, “authenticity of appearance
is all” (Howard 2003, 143). Far from philosophical or historical debates,
the question of authenticity is approached within the area of heritage like
any other technical issue, as part of a representation that helps socialise
heritage by adding value to it.

Re-enacting Experiences of Heritage

    One of the fundamental ways in which heritage is represented is
through processes that recreate and transmit the knowledge about a her-
itage reality, including its feelings and experiences.
    In the locality of Labastida, there are routes with performers in its old
town. In those routes, the lifestyle of medieval times is re-enacted using
actors who perform daily life scenes of that period next to the monu-
ments and architectonic remains still present, which are part of the urban
landscape of the town (see figure 3 on the next page). The city council
promotes them as follows:

         You will find interactive and dynamic visits, where visitors will enjoy
     and understand the past, experiencing live some of the key moments of
     the history of Labastida (City Council of Labastida7)

    The staged re-enactment makes it possible for the subjects to experi-
ence live history. The anachronism contained in the statement shows how
the network of experts fulfils its mediation during the construction of a
heritage relationship. This works as a channel between the subject, who
currently lives in the municipality, and the heritage, which includes histo-
ry, costumes, events, and monuments that belong to the past. Those who
perform and the ones who observe are involved in a cultural performance
that implies meaning construction (Smith 2006). This representation ful-

     7
         Source http://www.labastida-bastida.org/
Muriel                                                                                    41
fils the emergence and connection between the subjects and objects of
heritage.




         Figure 3. Staged route in Labastida (Araba). Source: City Council of Labastida

    In this way, in a territory-museum that revolves around the iron indus-
try in Legazpia (province of Gipuzkoa), the head of the museum states
that “the idea is to bring a person to the modern age of iron” (Arnaldo,
head of museum). How is it possible, then, to come back in time, to an
era that does not exist anymore, in which it is impossible to live and expe-
rience in the contemporaneity? Through heritage activations that simulate
those social universes now extinct or in ruins:

        Then, what we have done is to recreate a housing of the 50s in one of
    the working class neighbourhoods, exactly as they were in the 50s (Ar-
    naldo, head of museum).

    Some of the most relevant social spaces of the 1950s have been repro-
duced based on research works that determine how they were at that
time: a working class bedroom, a classroom, a chapel. Thus, some of most
important referents of that time – labour, education, and religion – are
invoked. All of it is staged where everything took place, recreating their
social existence and including their buildings, aesthetics, languages, prac-
tices, and objects (see figure 4 on the next page):

        You open the desks where we put inside some texts and books... you
    open some of them and you hear the music, or how they learnt, the teacher
    saying, “one time one, plus three, plus five, let’s see... wrong!” (Arnaldo,
    head of museum).
42                                                                         Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)




              Figure 4. Recreation of a classroom in the 50s, Legazpia (Gipuzkoa).
                                   Source: Lenbur Fundazioa

    Not only do experts try to reproduce the spaces from an aesthetic and
a formal point of view, but they also seek to get the visitor involved in
what happened there. This social universe is unified through a route:
“One day in the 50s. The route of the workers” (see figure 5), which of-
fers the chance of travelling in time and experiencing the universe of
working class families in the 50s8.




 Figure 5. The Route of the Workers. Promotional diptych on the Route of the Workers.
                              Source: Lenbur Fundazioa




     8
         Source: http://lenbur.com/es/rutas/ruta-obrera/
Muriel                                                                         43
   In this manner, heritage, to be considered as such, must be experi-
enced or, even beyond that, heritage is the experience in itself (Smith
2006). It is an experience that makes the partnership between heritage
and the groups who experience it unbreakable. The re-enacted spaces
during the activation vibrate like meeting points between experts and
non-experts and, above all, between the population and heritage. Those
are the places where it is possible to establish the relationship that pro-
duces both of them.

Standardising Heritage: The Activation of a Route

    The standard is how heritage is enacted in this kind of activation. Ex-
hibited following a closed pattern, it is part of a “factory-produced com-
mon heritage” (Bauman 1993, 161). The advantages of this kind of activa-
tion rest on the fact that it simplifies the recognition of its codes, which
makes the task of socialising heritage elements simpler. Brands, typical
signs and standard nomenclatures facilitate – by giving a framework of
shared meanings between subjects and experts, humans and non-humans
– the crystallisation of the heritage relationship. I will describe, in this
case, part of the process through which an expert, that belongs to a hik-
ing business, designs and executes an official route, between the Basque
towns of Zaldibar and Elorrio, where different elements of heritage are
highlighted.
    The official approval of the route is a central process within this type
of heritage activation. In this procedure, an alphanumeric code is as-
signed to the path designed, becoming, effectively and officially, a route:

        When I asked him what would happen in case the approval number
    did not arrive, he answered angrily: “No number, no route! That simple!”
    (Fieldwork note).

    The expert expresses his sharp opinion in relation to the possibility
that an already designed and signposted route was not officially ap-
proved: the staging would be ruined because of the absence of the num-
ber that certifies it is an officially approved route and, therefore, the pos-
sibility of individuals approaching heritage through the act of walking
would vanish.
    This particular staging of heritage gradually takes shape around a
route, which that same representation helps to construct, through a series
of articulated figures, colours, codes, and standardised forms (see figure 6
on the next page).
    To that end, it is necessary to paint some spots along the path with the
required colours and forms, a task assumed by the hiking technician. The
entire route is, thus, signposted with the corresponding marks and col-
ours, always trying to orientate the subjects who decide to visit it. Moreo-
ver, a set of boards and arrows are posted in the field in order to orientate
44                                                                         Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

the subjects' trajectory while they are walking along the route. At all
times, the aim is to maintain the visitor inside a closed circuit, which is
determined by the official approval and the points of passage the visitor
must pass and visit.




Figure 6. Codes for type of path (Great Path, Little Path, Local Path) and direction according
 to international regulations. Source: Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing.

    Once the route is appropriately delimited, the only step left is to sign-
post the relevant points on the path with a particular piece of heritage. In-
terpretive panels (see figure 7) point out where to locate heritage ele-
ments inside the route, offering a brief interpretation of that heritage,
which should be understood by the subjects who are walking through the
route.




Figure 7. Interpretive panel and hiking technician placing the base for an interpretive panel.
Source: Author.

    This is, in the end, the activation of an officially approved route fol-
lowing a standard protocol. Experts face a representation of heritage that,
in their opinion, will enhance its value, recognition, and, eventually, will
facilitate that the subjects who walk its path will make that heritage their
own. It is possible to walk across what is ours.
Muriel                                                                               45
5. Conclusions

    In this article, I focused on a network of experts that – in their majori-
ty – take into account other people as part of their main goal. Associated
with other agents – not always human, this group of experts articulates
themselves in a complex network that enables them to mediate between
things, influence others, and produce relations.
    Beyond the reflexivity of the individuals studied and rare cases of ex-
perts who were only focused on heritage as an object, most of the media-
tions they were involved in had as their final objective to influence other
individuals. Despite the importance of the network of experts as regards
heritage, they never impose their willing in a unidirectional and unequiv-
ocal way on those subjects they seek to affect. The interests and processes
at stake are multiple: some pretend to construct a sense of belonging and
community; others, socialise a knowledge about a reality that potentially
defines us; there are those who wish they could seduce more people, at-
tracting increasing numbers of visitors; it is even possible to find those
with more material intentions, who want to sell cultural heritage more
and better. In any case, subjects (experts) who take into account other
subjects (the individuals who are represented by cultural heritage).
    Even though there is a strategic orientation in this dominant heritage
mentality (Smith 2006), not all the elements of the network explicitly con-
sider this question, since everyone and everything seek different aims. Ac-
cording to Latour (1999), intentionality does not belong to objects nor to
humans, but to these dispositifs, apparatus, institutions or, as in this text,
networks:

        Purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects,
    but they are not properties of humans either. They are properties of insti-
    tutions, of apparatuses, of what Foucault called dispositifs. Only corporate
    bodies can absorb the proliferation of mediators, to regulate their expres-
    sion, to redistribute skills, to force boxes to blacken and close (idem, 192).

    Cultural heritage is, then, part of what we could call politics of mean-
ing or politics of identity; and the network of experts, including human
and non-human elements, play an essential role in it. In this case, the
principal network studied has been the one that is configured by expert
agents who traverse the field of cultural heritage in the Basque Country,
observing the main relationship in which they mediate and help to pro-
duce: the relationship between an object – heritage – as the synthesis of
images and experiences of what is ours, and a subject – the group, socie-
ty, community or individual that identify with that heritage – who consid-
ers that object as a fundamental part of their own definition (or at least
they recognise it as something that belongs to a group, even if it is not
their own).
    How do these experts succeed in – or attempt to succeed – influenc-
46                                                            Tecnoscienza – 7 (1)

ing other people in the particular relationship that is established between
them and heritage? The processes described here were four: register, con-
servation, interpretation, activation. They do not cease to be forms – ideal
types – constructed from brush strokes of reality – impressions. In sum,
the impressionist mapping that describes systematically the set of media-
tions that leads to the emergence of a heritage relationship.
    Considering that the social is the articulation of dissimilar elements,
an articulation that is produced through the comings and goings of asso-
ciations and displacements, it is postulated that the attention of sociologi-
cal description should be focused on those movements and transfor-
mations, which can be condensed in the notion of mediation. Mediations
which involve the diverse agents and processes that fall under the socio-
logical perspective, constituted as sociology’s units of observation. This
way of approaching social reality permits the study of both the most regu-
lar and stable aspects and situations (aligned and stabilized mediations),
and those that by their nature are more fluid and changing (volatile and
continually transforming mediations) as shown by the case studied.
    Mapping applied as a sociological methodology avoids the observed
processes, agents and mediations being enclosed in social forms that have
already been studied or installed in sociological knowledge, thus, it per-
mits us to carry out more accurate representations of the reality studied.
In some cases these social forms may adequately describe the reality ob-
served, but in many other cases they will limit the richness of movements,
displacements, and actors being studied. This involves a research process
that is detailed, costly and relatively slow, but the results of which provide
more realist sociological descriptions.
    However, as social reality is in continual change, an assemblage of
displacements, transformations, and associations in permanent move-
ment, it appears as an unpredictable tide or maelstrom (Law 2004), which
is difficult to describe with meticulous mapping methods that, moreover,
are inadequate for carrying out sociological descriptions on a certain
scale. As a result, joining a mapping technique with an impressionist ap-
proach is a way of capturing these fluid and changing aspects of reality; in
doing so, the impression of their movements remains, while the descrip-
tions reveal regularities and typologies that partially transcend the speci-
ficities of the cases studied, facilitating the work of generalizing, which is
the objective of all sociology. With its own limitations, the impressionist
mapping seeks – within a particular regime of truth or mode of existence,
a particular sociological ontology – to end “the restrictions imposed by
the notion of symbolic representation of a material world” (Latour 2013b,
299).
    I have to insist that this narrative is built from the point of view of ex-
perts, which leaves to others the task of researching about the role played
by the rest of the social actors in the heritage relationship: how do they
receive these expert representations? Do they contest them? Do they
pledge to them? Do they transform them? Is it established an alliance be-
Muriel                                                                          47
tween these groups and the network of experts? Or is it more like a con-
frontation? Do they add different things to the mediations of register,
conservation, interpretation and activation? Or do they add complete
new mediations? Do they, in short, create new definitions of heritage? If
we want to redefine agency and how reality is constructed from an Actor-
Network Theory point of view, we do need to acknowledge the distribut-
ed nature – the different entities involved – of the different “modes of do-
ing” (Abrahamsson et al. 2015).
    As a general conclusion, it can be stated that behind the idea of herit-
age there is no fundamental ethos that constructs it. There is no element
or transcendental concept that explains it, neither identity nor tradition
nor history. Although those concepts are constantly invoked, they are nei-
ther the outcome of heritage nor its previous condition. That is the para-
dox of contemporary society; full of politics of identity, memory, and
meaning, only the succession of processes and mediations which are part
of heritage is what actually gives a value to that heritage, what makes it a
contemporary sense of belonging provider.


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