Sensitive heritage and social participation

The challenges of building participatory governance in sensitive heritage sites – Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site and Nosso Sagrado Collection

Abstract

This article analyzes the challenges involved in constructing participatory governance models around sites of sensitive memory, drawing on the experiences of the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site and the Nosso Sagrado Collection. Both cases are marked by trajectories of social mobilization that drove their heritage recognition processes. These mobilizations brought together civil society actors, social movements, intellectuals, and public institutions around these heritage assets, with the goal of recognizing, preserving, and making visible the political memory embedded in sites and artifacts that materially record histories of violence and resistance by groups historically oppressed by the State.

The research examines the complexities involved in implementing shared management, highlighting the tensions between the discourse of social participation and its actual practice within the political spaces of cultural heritage, particularly in light of the regulations enforced by cultural institutions responsible for managing these assets, such as IPHAN and IBRAM. Based on the monitoring of the Valongo Wharf Management Committee (2022–2024) and the public initiatives of the Shared Management Group of the Nosso Sagrado Collection (2023–present), the study addresses institutional limitations, symbolic disputes, budgetary obstacles, and power asymmetries that shape these processes, drawing on concepts from Political Geography.

It concludes that consolidating a policy for sensitive heritage requires the strengthening of political spaces that allow for the protagonism of memory-holding groups through norms of equality, transparency, and representation, the guarantee of effective voice and vote, and a commitment to practices of historical reparation and social justice.