Appropriation of the cultural heritage in the port region of Rio de Janeiro: cultural policies between territoriality and exploitation

Abstract

The article focuses on different agents and actions of cultural policy that, in the context of the Porto Maravilha project, dispute the discourses and practices about culture in the portuary zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, the article discuss the different logics that operate the appropriation of the cultural patrimony materially situated or symbolically referred to in the region: on the one hand the logic of territoriality that, acting on several scales, is marked by symbolic appropriation, by the sense of belonging (different from property) and the production of urban common goods; on the other, the logic of exploitation, marked by the private appropriation of the collective symbolic capital produced by culturally subordinated groups in cultural policies promoted by and for dominant groups. To do so, this piece is based on an expanded understanding of cultural policies, recognizing their different spheres of production (institutional or not, from the state or civil society), without ignoring the privileged position that the state - and the coalition of powers and favor of which it operates - holds in the dispute for the legitimacy of the expression of the different cultures that the urban space gathers.

Keywords: Cultural heritage, Porto Maravilha, territoriality, social appropriation, cultural policies