Heritage: a world-term whose meaning, from its very origin, is intrinsically gendered and partial.
Derived from the Latin patrimonium, itself formed from pater (“father”) and munus (“duty” or “task”), the term has assumed apparently different meanings over time. Originally, it referred to the moral and economic duty of the head of the household to manage property and provide for the sustenance of his offspring. Later, the term shifted to designate the set of goods themselves that the father transmitted to his descendants through inheritance. Finally, it came to be understood as the totality of assets, rights, and wealth belonging to an individual, a company, or a collective entity (as in the case of cultural heritage).
The epistemological thread connecting these meanings seems to be that heritage is always “managed” and “mediated” by individual voices and therefore by specifically situated subjects, even when referring to collective heritage.
From a Foucauldian perspective, heritage is embedded within relations of power/knowledge: cultural meanings are produced within systems of authority rather than existing as neutral or self-evident realities. Institutions such as UNESCO, museums, and expert communities play a central role in determining what can be recognized as legitimate heritage, thereby shaping processes of inclusion and exclusion. Needless to say, this mechanism generates selective visibility of cultural practices: some forms of knowledge are recognized and institutionalized, while others remain marginal or invisible.
Increasingly within academic literature (Gender Studies, Decolonial Studies, Critical Heritage Studies), one can trace an effort toward resignification. Precisely through the acknowledgment of regimes of truth, cultural heritage has been shown to refer historically to a public sphere inhabited by specific configurations of gender, race, and class.
Within this mechanism of selection, women’s knowledge has largely been defined as care work or as forms of knowledge strictly associated with the home and private space. For this reason, some of the earliest efforts of feminist movements were directly linked to archival practices.
From a feminist perspective, cultural heritage is not gender-neutral. On the contrary, it reflects structural inequalities in processes of recognition and valorization of knowledge.
Women’s contributions to cultural continuity have often been excluded from official heritage frameworks or relegated to categories such as “folklore” and “tradition,” rather than being recognized as legitimate forms of cultural production. As Laurajane Smith (2006) argues in her critique of the Authorized Heritage Discourse, heritage institutions tend to reproduce dominant cultural narratives that obscure alternative forms of knowledge production. Feminist Heritage Studies therefore seek to make visible the gendered dimensions of cultural authority, rethinking everyday and domestic practices as central elements of cultural heritage rather than marginal aspects of it.
In order to activate this resignification, feminist ethnography and anthropology offer methodological and theoretical tools for recovering and valuing forms of knowledge that have historically been marginalized within academic and institutional contexts. Scholars such as Sherry Ortner (1974) and Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) have highlighted the importance of situating cultural analysis within lived experience, paying particular attention to everyday practices, embodied knowledge, and narrative forms often overlooked by formal epistemologies. Abu-Lughod (1991), in particular, proposes an approach known as writing against culture, which challenges essentialist and static representations of cultural systems. In their place, it values partial, situated, and relational forms of knowledge, emphasizing the importance of voice, subjectivity, and lived experience in ethnographic research.
This reconfiguration of knowledge is also directly linked to decolonial approaches, which critically interrogate the colonial foundations of systems of knowledge production and heritage classification. Drawing on the work of Walter Mignolo (2011) and Aníbal Quijano (2000), this perspective argues that modern epistemologies have been shaped by colonial structures of power that continue to determine what can be considered legitimate knowledge, culture, and heritage.
From a decolonial perspective, heritage institutions—often grounded in Western epistemologies and global governance systems such as UNESCO—tend to universalize specific cultural norms while marginalizing local, Indigenous, and subaltern systems of knowledge.
Quijano describes this dynamic as part of the coloniality of power, namely the persistence of cultural hierarchies even after the formal end of colonialism. Mignolo further develops the concept of epistemic disobedience, calling for the recognition and activation of alternative forms of knowledge that have historically been excluded from dominant frameworks.
In the context of cultural heritage, this implies a shift from top-down, expert-driven models of conservation toward plural, community-based, and locally situated interpretations of cultural value. Such approaches challenge the universalist claims of traditional heritage discourses and emphasize the importance of epistemic diversity, community autonomy, and cultural self-determination.
References
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books.
Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. Routledge.
Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical Approaches. Routledge.
Waterton, E., & Smith, L. (2010). The Recognition and Misrecognition of Community Heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies.
Smith, L., Shackel, P., & Campbell, G. (Eds.) (2009). Heritage, Labour and the Politics of Care. Left Coast Press.
Waterton, E. (2010). Politics, Policy and the Production of Heritage.
Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing Against Culture.
Behar, R. (1996). The Vulnerable Observer. Beacon Press.
Mignolo, W. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Duke University Press.
Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage.
Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies in Heritage Studies.
Written by Francesca Cannone