Identity and (dis)owning the past: anthropological insights into heritage preservation and revitalization

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on and subsequent interviews with Turkish nationalist communities who continue speaking an endangered Greek variety, this article raises a number of questions around the preservation and revitalisation efforts. It departs from the declining status of the language due to migration to urban centres, which seem to hinder intergenerational transmission, and socio-political context, the article explores the heritage community's seeming disinterest in documentation, preservation, and revitalisation prospects. The discussion brings in parallels from other heritage preservation efforts from archaeology and anthropology and highlights the dilemmas evoked by such endeavours in the ostensible absence of bottom-up demand or active resistance.