Abstract
The relationship between heritage and rural development takes place within the heritage making process. It presents different characteristics of what exists in urban context, especially through the role that can play the built heritage in the reception of the tourists. The study of the case of a French department, the Gers, characterised by an important intangible heritage linked to gastronomy and agriculture, but away from the major flows of mass tourism, reveals three major criteria for success: the importance of organising an actor’s network that gathers the world of local economy, tourism and heritage, in conjunction with local authorities; the existence of a strong legitimation structure that justifies these links. In France it was developed from a scientific approach: that of rural ethnology; the inscription in a temporality which allows successive stages and which is as much that of the local development project as that of the patrimonial action itself.
Highlights
The call for articles says: ‘Preservation is the basis and premise of revitalisation: the latter is the guarantee and ultimate purpose of the former.’ This formula highlights the primacy of revitalisation
The three stages take place at the same time and are totally linked. This is typical of a process of making heritage, as it has been much described in recent decades
The contribution to the tourist economy usually seems the best way to justify any kind of action on built heritage, it is the ‘engine’ of the making of heritage
Summary
The call for articles says: ‘Preservation is the basis and premise of revitalisation: the latter is the guarantee and ultimate purpose of the former.’ This formula highlights the primacy of revitalisation. These are mainly two organisations that depend on the department but remain private actors with a certain autonomy: on the one hand, the CAUE (see Note 9) which brings together architects and landscapers and intervenes to advise municipalities and individuals on their development projects or construction Their role is to intervene before the decision-making and to prepare it, while the State and communities administrations are involved in the decision itself. It is understandable that the investors are the most mobile category and the most tempted by speculative behaviour, while farmers are practically not and newcomers rooted very little This configuration exists everywhere in France, but with various nuances: the official organisations and the networks can be more or less interested and active, in particular according to the eligibility to the European aids, but it is possible that there may be very few, and even no interested owners. Such coordination is made possible, or at least easier, by the existence of a community animated by a strong selfesteem and its past
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