Heritigization processes and social function in community-based museums in Los Ríos Region

Abstract

The museum imagination that emerged in the sixties installed a new paradigm that has sought for museums to assume a social function, express and resolve the concerns of their community and give a sense of place. A study is presented on community-based museums in the Los Ríos Region that represent some of the ideals of this New Museology. The purpose is to understand how objects and manifestations reveal situated heritigization processes that, mediated by the exercise of social function, broaden official conceptualizations about heritage. The results obtained from this qualitative approach, multiple case-study, show shared elements in the pathways towards heritigization in the community-based museums studied: a collective, co-creative and co-authored character; the presence of values expressed in practical ethics; and mobility and coexistence between intimate, community and pluriversal scales.