Robert Shannan Peckham – författare

This collection brings together leading writers and thinkers to examine the ways in which ingrained assumptions about heritage are being challenged today. It explores key questions that surround heritage as a pressing political issue: what happens when the concept of culture is uncoupled from the nation? What meanings does heritage have in the context of the new societies and within the so-called new "politics of difference"? How does history become heritage? What history should we preserve as heritage? The contributors draw upon visual, literary and documentary evidence to examine heritage's contested histories. The result is an anthology of critical writing which should be indispensable reading for those with an interest in cultural history, politics and European studies.

Recent conflicts in southeast Europe have drawn attention to the close relationship between place and national identity. In this book Robert Shannan Peckham explores the conscious link between identity and homeland as this was articulated in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece, a period important to the understanding of the present Balkan crisis. He demonstrates how territory was appropriated through a range of social practices and institutional activities: writing fiction, identifying folklore, sponsoring archaeology, studying geography and cartography. The particularities of place, Peckham argues, were construed both as underpinning a territorial expansion and as a resistance to the homogenizing drive of a state-sponsored nationalism. This book makes an innovative theoretical contribution to the debate on nationalism and nationhood and suggests new ways of thinking about geography and cultural politics.