Agricultural Economics (AGRICECON) (Jul 2003)
Care for monuments in Central Europe regarding the revitalisation of the countryside
Abstract
The cultural landscape and rural areas are considered to be a key component of the European cultural heritage. The European Landscape Convention, which the Czech Republic signed in the autumn of 2002, was also formulated in this sense. Consequently, the reform of care of monuments cannot be left entirely to official workers, but is becoming an important subject from the standpoint of maintenance of the functional and demographic stability of rural areas. It is necessary to point out that the care for monuments in Central Europe is at a crucial point, that could be described as a crisis. The reasons are as follows. 1) Time extension of care for monuments as well as the spatial extension of care for monuments. 2) Care for monuments has somewhat neglected to explain and defend its significance - consequently, a great many private owners of cultural monuments are not fully aware of the ideas, on the basis of which limitations are placed on their rights to manage their property, for the good of the cultural heritage. 3) Aesthetic conclusions are increasingly important in deciding what is and what is not a cultural monument. However, this can readily be influenced by the influx of very attractive, but worthless "popular" architecture, currently being introduced by a great many development companies. 4) Care for monuments represents the execution of a particular activity rather than a fixed formulated intellectual system of canons. 5) Even under the best economic conditions, the state as such does not have the means to provide appropriate care for the cultural heritage in state ownership (including state land in the poorer areas) and is certainly not capable of creating a motivation system within its framework for searching for new ways of using this property without abusing it. 6) In general, it can be stated that condition of democratisation within the care for monuments certainly does not attain the level of participation in environmental protection. 7) Care for monuments, especially in Central Europe, tends to continue to emphasise simple conservation of monuments and is minimally concerned with reanimation of the monument fund. This is why the care for the cultural heritage must again formulate its purpose, especially in relation to the decrease in the importance of national states, globalisation and, simultaneously, regionalisation of the world.
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