ABSTRACT
That heritage has a multiplicity of uses and can be created and consumed in a multitude of ways is generally agreed. Here I focus on the ways in which heritage creation is affected by social change and the political environment involved. The national level is central but is reflected on the local and global scale. The historic roots and contemporary consequences of the Estonian use of people, past and place in heritage are explicable within the historical particularity of Estonian social relations and a larger global (tourism) economy. Estonian (national) heritage has attained centre stage after forming an opposing undercurrent for centuries. New challenges are offered by a multiethnic society, recent environmental pollution and increasing urbanisation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Globally, heritage presumes a uniform, easily recognisable form, forcing national heritage into an international standard expressed by the World Heritage criteria. 1 Assessed in similar terms, phenomena are labelled ‘the heritage of human kind’. Diverse legacies are provided with common façades so that the international heritage experience can be easily accessible and simple to understand for an international traveller. Economic arguments generally have a progressive significance in heritage creation. The commodity value of heritage and its connectedness to particular places is stressed by Graham et al., who state: ‘The economic commodification of place through heritage will help ensure that it remains firmly fixed in representations of place, faithfully reflecting the enduring cultural and economic boundedness of societies.’ 2 Heritage is thus as much a spatial as a temporal phenomenon; its past- and place-boundedness together make people, both as creators and receivers, central in heritage.
