In an era cross-cut with various agendas and expressions of national belonging and global awareness, “the nation” as a collective reference point and experienced entity stands at the center of complex identity struggles. This book explores how such struggles unfold in practice at a highly symbolic battlefield site in the Danish/German borderland. Comprised of an ethnography of two profoundly different institutions – a conventional museum and an experience-based heritage center – it analyses the ways in which staff and visitors interfere with, relate to, and literally “make sense” of the war heritage and its national connotations. Borders of Belonging offers a comparative, in-depth analysis of the practices and negotiations through which history is made and manifested at two houses devoted to the interpretation of one event: the decisive battle of the 1864 war in which Otto von Bismarck, on his way to uniting the new German Empire, led the Prussian army to victory over the Danish. Working through his empirical material to engage with and challenge established theoretical positions in the study of museums, modernity, and tourism, Mads Daugbjerg demonstrates that national belonging is still a key cultural concern, even as it asserts itself in novel, muted, and increasingly experiential ways.
Tabela de Conteúdo
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Borders of Belonging: Investigating Landscapes of Danishness Today
Chapter 1. Dybbøl and the Danish Nation: History and Context
Chapter 2. Out of sight: Reconsidering the High Modern Museum
Chapter 3. The Banalities of Being Danish: National Identity at the Castle Museum
Chapter 4. Sensing 1864 at the Battlefield Centre
Chapter 5. The Fate of the Nation at the Battlefield Centre
Chapter 6. Danish Heritage Today: Cosmopolitan Nationalism and the Reappearance of the Romantic
Conclusion: Paradoxes of modern belonging: Reassembling Heritage, Nation and Experience
Bibliography
Index
Sobre o autor
Mads Daugbjerg is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University. His publications on heritage practices, cultural tourism, and the concept of experience include articles in the International Journal of Heritage Studies and in Museum and Society, as well as a co-edited special issue of History and Anthropology (with Thomas Fibiger) on “Globalized Heritage” (2011).