Emotions and Emotion-Related Values in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Emotions are relatively brief, object-directed affective episodes that arise when a person appraises an event, place, object, or memory as relevant to their concerns, and that unfold across several coordinated components: cognitive appraisal, physiological change, motivational and action tendencies, motor expression, and subjective feeling. Emotion is distinguished from the broader, longer-lasting and often objectless state of mood, from core affect (the elementary, always-present feeling of pleasantness and activation), and from feeling (the conscious, subjective component of an emotional episode). In relation to cultural heritage, “emotions and emotion-related values” denote (i) the affective responses that people have to heritage places, objects, and practices, and (ii) the dimensions of heritage significance—variously termed social, communal, spiritual, and associative value—that are constituted through, and cannot be assessed independently of, those affective bonds. On this view, heritage is not an inert set of material remains whose value is intrinsic and expert-determined; it is an active, meaning-making and emotionally charged cultural process through which individuals and communities relate to the past in the present.