New article: “Harmonized Spaces, Dissonant Objects, Inventing Europe? Mobilizing Digital Heritage”

My new article on digital heritage in Europe has just been published in a special theme section of Culture Unbound  on “Exhibiting Europe”.  

“Harmonized Spaces, Dissonant Objects, Inventing Europe? Mobilizing Digital Heritage”, Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011: 295–315

Abstract

Technology, particularly digitization and the online availability of cultural  heritage collections, provides new possibilities for creating new forms of
‘European cultural heritage’. This essay analyzes the emerging sphere of  European digital heritage as a project of technological harmonization. Drawing on  Andrew Barry’s concepts of technological zones, it examines the various ways in  which agency and European citizenship are being reconfigured around cultural  heritage. It explores the “Europeanization” of digital heritage in three areas. In the  first section, it analyzes the recent agenda for digital heritage of the European  Union as a harmonizing project to create a smooth space of cultural heritage. In  the next sections, the development of a harmonized virtual exhibit on the history  of technology in Europe forms a case study to explore processes of harmonization  at the level of the web platform, and in the aesthetics of digitized objects. It argues  that rather than seeking to elide the points of unevenness and ‘dissonance’ that  emerge in harmonization processes, we should instead look for ways to embrace  them as points of dialogue and discovery.

You can read the article here.