PATRIMONY

PATRIMONY

Land within the meaning of assets inherited from the father; the legacy of tangible or intangible assets characteristic of the inhabited place, family, clan, tribe.

Partimony as fathers’ legacy means the assets and goods owned by or associated with a given family (clan), often for many generations, and therefore marked with a positive emotional charge; sometimes it is mythologized, becoming a component of family or clan stories. Lack of patrimony can mean uprooting (absence of belonging to a particular land, family, place) and condemnation to exile.

The term “patrimony” in Polish refers to the inheritance in the male line “from the father”, “from the sword”, so called patrylinearism, in which the son inherits from the father. In other cultures, it can take the form of inheritance in the female line, the so-called matrilinearism, in which the nephew inherits from his uncle, his mother’s brother.

Patrimony can sometimes be unwanted heritage, especially when there are no assets (including financial ones) or if the assets to which it refers contradict current trends and traditions. Examples include the statues of Buddha (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) destroyed in Bamyan, Afghanistan, in 2001, the cultural revolution in China resulting in the destruction of thousands of artifacts, or the deliberate policy of destruction and devastation of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. Sometimes they are abandoned and forgotten (when a community dies out or moves to a new place, such as the Mexican city of Teotihuacán, which until the 10th century was the centre of political and religious power).

[M.G. ]

Literature:

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Burszta, Józef. Kultura ludowa – kultura narodowa: szkice i rozprawy. Warszawa: LSW, 1974.

Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited, 1976.