On cultural heritage and its meanings

Abstract

The author reflects upon the cultural heritage, considering everything that contribute to the culture formation knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, rights, customs, capacities and habits acquired by the human being and transmitted from generation to generation, and the dimension of the symbolic forces of their meaning, as representation of the cultural expression of social making. The author intends to (re)define cultural heritage as social memory and, therefore,
part of the history, arguing that this will make it possible to approach such heritage as part of a great information collection: as a source of information, within the educational and research processes, aiming at the construction of a socially
active being, who, joining past and present, would (re)create images of the city – par excellence, the formation space of heritage, as well as images of the people and the culture, observing the historical, social and communication conditions. Such socially active being would accomplish all that, by taking into account, also, the contemporary requirements, which consider human production as a cultural good, therefore, one of the utmost significance. The author intends to approach the cultural heritage from the perspective of the social uses, the appropriation of its own history by society, which, thus, recognizing and legitimating such heritage, consequently turning its elements into facilitators of the educational and citizenship processes.