This critical examination of the concept of cultural heritage is based on an overall phenomenological approach, with focus on Alfred Schütz?s further development of Edmund Husserl?s idea of the lifeworld. With strong emphasis on the subjective and intersubjective dimensions, the concept of cultural heritage is contextualized, analysed and criticized from different aspects for the purpose of enriching the discourse of cultural heritage.A literature based methodology is used, including a hermeneutic analysis of theoretical texts in the field of cultural heritage studies and the new Swedish Culture Environmental Law (?Kulturmiljölagen?) and related bills. Qualitative interviews deal with people?s notions about the concepts of culture, cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage.

This paper examines the concept of heritage and which factors that determines how we evaluate and select what should be considered cultural heritage. This has been examined using a qualitative study involving interviews with seven people working within different parts of the cultural heritage sector. The purpose was to get a picture of what the public sector?s cultural heritage consists of and why so. The research question was: What gives the status of cultural heritage? This was examined by looking at further questions: What defines the concept of cultural heritage? Who decides what should be considered cultural heritage? What is significant when discussing cultural heritage? One conclusion is that the concept itself is experienced as diffuse but that the meaning can be summarized as the traces we leave behind to be preserved by future generations.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine the use of the concept cultural heritage in Swedish governmental cultural policy. Ten official reports, reaching over a time period of seven years (1997-2004) are examined in the following way: What is cultural heritage? What functions/ values does the cultural heritage have? Whose heritage is a cultural heritage? With some simplification you can say that there are two different views on cultural heritage in the documents. The most common way to refer to cultural heritage is a category of chosen historical objects whose preservation is motivated by their function as sources of information and knowledge about the history and development of the Swedish society.

The intention with this essay has been to examine how the public instances working with cultural heritage in Sweden deals with the housing built under the period of the so called miljonprogrammet (?the million programme?) during 1965-75. The interest in the built environment from the 1960s and 70s has increased in the last ten years within the field of cultural heritage. The purpose with this study is to examine which cultural values that are assigned to the housing of the million programme. The purpose is also, as mentioned before, to study how the field of cultural heritage deals with this type of built environment.

It often occurs that the spirit regarding the future as a conservator is rather pessimistic. Howcome that there are so few employed conservators, when the need for conservation obviouslyis big? What kind of changes is needed for a better status regarding the conservation?This thesis concerns the development of the field of conservation in Sweden. What havehappened, what will happen and, particularly, what should happen? The information wasgathered from literature studies and interviews during the spring of 2010.

This graduate essay treats how the cultural heritage of Gothenburg is mediated in different respect.The various sources that have been studied are literary such as guidebooks and books that tell thehistory of Gothenburg. Internet pages and citywalks have also been studied, as well as theinformation the visitor can extract in the area.The introduction presents the subject of the essay, as well as its significance. In the second chapter isthe mediation of the history behind cultural heritage as well as its present interpretation described.Therefore, in chapter three, is a short version of the history of Gothenburg described. The main partof the essay, the main examination, is treated in chapter four where literary sources, citywalks andsigns in the area are examined. Chapter four ends with a suggestion of how the cultural heritage inVästra Nordstaden could in a better way be mediated to residents and visitors in Gothenburg.The results and concluding discussion in chapter five reflects on what was represented in chapterfour.

This master thesis aims to examine the methods of the conservation field and their visionabout maintenance and change, in terms of liturgical values. This is to be able todetermine if there is a need to develop the methods that the field of conservation has tosafeguard the intangible cultural heritage of the churches.This is mainly a literature review, focusing on different tutorials from the Swedish nationalheritage board, and different texts on liturgy aswell as Unesco's Convention for theSafeguarding of intagible Heritage (2003), ratified in Sweden in January 2011. A casestudy of the practical work has been carried out on three churches that have undergonechange. The application process and the results were important for this study.The conclusion is that the conservation field have ambitions to preserve the liturgicalvalues, but they do not have sufficiently developed methods to do so. Nevertheless, itappears that most cases of change in churches, increases the liturgical values..

This is a two year master's thesis in the field of museum and cultural heritage studies. The purpose of the thesis is to examine different opinions among museum employees about the role of museums. The thesis also aims to find out to what extent and in what way these opinions are influenced by the museum's own policy documents, the national cultural policy and the academic field of museum studies. I have conducted qualitative research interviews with six employees from three different cultural history museums. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on Laruajane Smith's term authorized heritage discourse.

This essay examines the debate that arose in connection to the sale of Carl Larsson?s monumental painting Midvinterblot in 1987. My main purpose is to examine which meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot and in which way the debate influenced the paintings significance as cultural heritage. I will therefore argue that the debate initiated a renegotitation of the paintings meaning as cultural heritage. In the debate the debaters emphasized the National Museum?s responsibility over cultural heritage, Midvinterblots aestethic, the paintings economic value and its national implications.

This thesis was created in an attempt to examine the concept of cultural heritage. What is cultural heritage to us and why do we treat it in the different ways we do? In my attempt to find an answer to this I have chosen to concentrate my interest on a situation where historical objects have been preserved as well as destroyed, Iraq 2003 until 2007. In my research I have divided the Iraqi cultural heritage in three different groups based on the different treatments they where exposed to during the occupation of Bagdad and the aftermath. For each group I have chosen one object or a category of objects to be a representative examined.

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities.

For some time now, there has been a debate concerning the relationship between the Cultural Heritage of Sweden and the public. It is said that mediation has been, and still is a, one-waydialog between the two. As a result, people have found a new way to interact with our heritage, thru cultural tourism. This area has been blamed for commercializing our CulturalHeritage, but also ignoring the great problems concerning fragile monuments and sites, which can be destroyed by tourism. Is it possible to find a solution regarding these problems, andcan these two areas benefit from each other?.

This Masters Degree thesis aims at giving an answer to what underlying ideologies are at work in digitizing our cultural heritage. Other questions to be answered are who are benefiting from a digitized cultural heritage and who are not, and what different opinions about digitizing our cultural heritage can be identified. Two studies are made in this thesis, one of Swedish political documents that concern digitizing our cultural heritage, libraries, museums and archives, and the other one is a study of documentation of three Swedish digitizing projects. In the first study three different, but closely associated ideologies are identified, namely a preserving, b giving access and c a mixture of both, and these are shown in a model. In the second study this model is then used to identify the ideologies of one project from each sector of the so called ABM-sector Archives, Libraries and Museums.

This essay examines the debate that arose in connection to the sale of Carl Larsson?s monumental painting Midvinterblot in 1987. My main purpose is to examine which meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot and in which way the debate influenced the paintings significance as cultural heritage. I will therefore argue that the debate initiated a renegotitation of the paintings meaning as cultural heritage. In the debate the debaters emphasized the National Museum?s responsibility over cultural heritage, Midvinterblots aestethic, the paintings economic value and its national implications.

This graduate essay treats how the cultural heritage of Gothenburg is mediated in different respect.The various sources that have been studied are literary such as guidebooks and books that tell thehistory of Gothenburg. Internet pages and citywalks have also been studied, as well as theinformation the visitor can extract in the area.The introduction presents the subject of the essay, as well as its significance. In the second chapter isthe mediation of the history behind cultural heritage as well as its present interpretation described.Therefore, in chapter three, is a short version of the history of Gothenburg described. The main partof the essay, the main examination, is treated in chapter four where literary sources, citywalks andsigns in the area are examined. Chapter four ends with a suggestion of how the cultural heritage inVästra Nordstaden could in a better way be mediated to residents and visitors in Gothenburg.The results and concluding discussion in chapter five reflects on what was represented in chapterfour.