Untitled INTRODUCTION

Heritage is a concept linked to the notion of time and its social experience, that is, to tem-porality. This monograph raises the question of how the production of heritage arises from the articulation of several visions of time, as well as from the institution of the system of symbols and meanings with which these visions are identified. In the same way that heritage needs to be transformed, loaded with new values and meanings so as not to cease to exist as such over time, the vision of the world and of the dominant past must be constantly updated so as not to lose its meaning. It shows how the institution of societies depends on the creation of new meanings (heritages) resulting from the interdependence between past, present and future. The originality of this monograph lies in showing with ethnographic data how the production of a heritage depends on certain elements acquiring new meanings and others changing them to provide a greater understanding of the way in which societies institute their continuity over time, in the context of a changing economic model at a glob-al scale. With this aim, we want to bring together a diverse sample of works, which, under different perspectives and theoretical approaches, allow a better understanding of the real-ities and concrete experiences of the institutionalization of heritage.