Arqueología y sociedadinteracción y acción desde la teoría crítica

Abstract

Managing archaeological heritage is a complicated and bureaucratic task that drinks from past’s bourgeois legacy which must be called into question nowadays. Hence, a discipline such as public archaeology may help us understand the model we live in and articulate more effective management devices to the good evolvement of archaeology as a social science and as a profession too. This PhD dissertation aims at analysing the concept of public archaeology as a management tool, at endowing it with a theoretical content based on the Critical theory of society, at analysing the socio-economic and political context where we develop our work as archaeologists and at proposing new action models through public archaeology that affect society positively. To do so, a long observation and documentation process has been undertaken, supported with some qualitative studies that identified basic problems to attend. This thesis is organised into four sections that, with the annexes, will delve into the proposed aims. Among all of them, it will be clear how the Critical theory of society can be a feasible theoretical framework for (public) archaeology since it offers the required tools to question our discipline in a continuous way. Recently, one of the main critiques to archaeology has been its disengagement with current social, economic and political reality. Although this is not right, since it has been perfectly articulated with that reality, there has been a conscious mismatch of its critique by always focusing our work on the past, nor the present. Therefore, words such as “interaction” and “action” refer to the situation of archaeology in its historical place as one more element within the contemporary social conglomerate. So, public archaeology will allow us define integrative and socially useful management ways in a context like the current one. But, above anything else, it will allow us change the management paradigm from the current passivity to a transformative activity...