ABSTRACT
Claims for the (re)affirmation of local identities as a vital condition for promoting the competitiveness of socio-economically lagging places and regions on the global markets of goods, services and ideas has been an integral part of the development policy discourse in the European Union since the nineties. Likewise, in Portugal, a highly integrated country in the global economy and culture, but with still sizable lagging areas, a commonplace in academic, political and media discourse has been the claim to combat descaracterização, that is, in Portuguese, the loss of authenticity,1 at local and regional levels. Descaracterização has indeed become a pressing problem in places and regions, mostly rural, which thrive on the promotion of local identity as a development resource. It has been argued that people, especially the young, should not only know more about, but also take greater care of, the natural environment, cultural heritage and other authentic specificities of the geographic space of their residence, work, or leisure.
