Heritage Populism: How a Hyper-Place Turned into a Village

The paper traces thirty years of ethnographic research carried out in the Hyblaean area (South-eastern Sicily) and dedicated to a critical political analysis of the processes of gentrification and patrimonialisation activated from the governmental action of a transnational agency such as UNESCO. It examines the combined creative and governmental effectiveness of these processes, linking them with certain socio-cultural characteristics peculiar to the area (parochialism, factionalism, aggressive masculinity, widespread violence). This highlights a peculiar form of accommodation of the area's social contexts in the socio-economic and cultural processes characteristic of late capitalist modernity