Everyday nationalism and identity narratives
the case of the built environment in the Sandanski municipality
Keywords:
cultural properties of local importance, Sandanski, everyday nationalism, collective memory, political narrative, banal nationalism, built environmentAbstract
The article does not take a position against the care for monuments that are being ignored and are suffering neglect and decay in the past decades, but instead is exploring what is the narrative that is pushed to the surface in the absence ofstate care. Research on the built environment and the monumental landscape in Southern and Southwestern Bulgaria is significant for the general social, internal and external political spheres due to its border positionality1 and historically loaded past. While we were evaluating the general condition of the immovable cultural properties of local importance (ICPLI) in the Municipality and the state of its management, I was enticed to search for the political agents that ‘claim’ authority over it (instead of the state) and to evaluate whose story do the local people ‘see and hear’ on an everyday basis. The article does not take a position against the care for monuments that are being ignored and are suffering neglect and decay in the past decades, but instead is exploring what is the narrative that is pushed to the surface in the absence of state care.
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