Which Heritage? Which Landscape? Defining the Authenticity of Cultural Heritage in Karula National Park

Abstract

The article focuses on the conflict between Karula National Park in South-Estonia and a local tourist entrepreneur, caused by restrictions due to the heritage protection of the national park. The conflict is regarded as a dialogue between different ways of interpretation of cultural heritage or heritage representations in which different ideological contexts, convictions and coping strategies are intertwined. The article describes the representational practices of both dialogue partners or the implementation of conceptual worlds through concrete behaviour and demonstrates how such actions can express certain social relations, as well as the use of the notion authenticity as an ideological argument in order to legitimize specific heritage representations or, on the contrary, prevent them.