General Data

The environment that surrounds a heritage asset is technically called the Buffer Zone. The relationship that this environment and its users have with the affective appropriation of heritage, the use and incorporation of the building in their life stories, in the flow of discourse of their oral narratives is the main evidence of the key element for the process of validating the universal value of that asset, Belonging.

The Research Group “Heritage and Belonging” has carried out extensive and significant research with the community of Santa Cruz dos Navegantes and the community of Góes, two areas adjacent to the Fortress of Santo Amaro da Barra Grande, in Guarujá, State of São Paulo. The Research Group, whose instigating question of the process questioned the construction and perenniality of this validating feeling, follows the hypothesis that there is a sense of belonging of the common citizen to his community, present in the narrative in a mixed bias of religious, political and socioeconomic influence, but with an apparent lack of a cultural identity.

The initial hypothesis is that the consolidation of this sense of belonging that can be extended to the heritage asset must go through the creation of a cultural support for the community, a forum of convergence for stories and oral narratives that circulate there and reinforce the values that characterize the heritage in question in the collective imagination.

The visits to the Fortress and the interaction with the communities, whether in the registration of their identities or in the plastic capture of the details that characterize the building and its presence and relationship with the users, gives rise to a collective intention of preservation. It stimulates the reactive historical sensibility, in the memory of each one, in the collective of the inhabitants and users of the historic site.

It is important to emphasize that this research, as well as any qualified action of a researcher, in this or any other space, must always have as a conclusive aspect the planning of a feedback action for the community with which the project worked. The form and characteristic of this feedback action results from the understanding of the elements that structure the feeling of belonging in order to maintain and even expand such a relationship. We understand that the guarantee of the preservation of a heritage involves the constant active resignification of its presence in the life of the community that appropriates it. The human being preserves what is dear to him and what has a mark present in his life history.

The Heritage and Belonging Research Group understands that it is important to understand this relationship and eventually propose a constructive and beneficial solution for all parties involved.