The category of cultural heritage is one of the key-concepts of the present day reality. Its important part, "small tradition" (the term created by Jozef Burszta), is seen in regional, local, diasporic, global and virtual contexts.
The problem with describing cultural heritage stems from deeply rooted valuation of the past and the present in the context of change and continuity of culture. On the one hand, cultural past is a basis for judging the reality, but on the other, it is a barrier to world-view change. On one hand, the tradition is tamed and continuously reconstructed, on the other, it is reprocessed and built anew. Some of the causes are probably tied to globalization of cultural processes, but there is also an intense process of localization related to the need of finding local values in the ethnic and ethnographic tradition. According to Zygmunt Bauman, "integration and fragmentation, globalization and territorialization of the world complete and support each other. Being more precise: they are two sides of the same process of redistribution of the sovereignty, power and freedom of action [...] co-occurrence distribution and synthesis, integration and dispersion are not at all haphazard and cannot be changed" (Glokalizacja, czyli komu globalizacja, a komu lokalizacja, "Studia Socjologiczne" 1997, 3 (146):60). Thus, on the one hand, the cultural tradition is a lost reality characterized by the memory of descending generations, on the other, it is highly valued characteristic of cultural identity. What is lost is searched for their commercial value of traditional ludic behavior or "ludic culture" (R. Kantor, Zabawa w dobie spo³eczeñstwa konsumpcyjnego, Wydawnictwo UJ, Kraków 2013). Thus, globalization frees the cultural heritage from locality and territoriality, whereas glocalization increases the value of what is forgotten and tamed. Consequently, today we have freedom of instrumental treatment of manifestations of the cultural heritage.
The academic conference "Lost/Looked for/ Tamed Cultural Heritage" is organized to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Polish Section of The International Organization of Folk Art (in 2019) and the 40th anniversary of the Museum of Toys and Play in Kielce.
We cordially invite to participate in our conference all researchers and academics interested in studies of the cultural heritage looked at from the anthropological, ethnological/ ethnographic, folkloristic, sociological or pedagogical/educational perspectives. We are sure that the conference presentations will help to diagnose the state of research on the cultural heritage and will bring practical effects in the area of functioning of "small homelands".