María Victoria Chenaut

The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) Yucatan 2021 Congress aims at being a space of dialogue among anthropologists and ethnologists from all around the world, bringing together diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. This forum will address the creative tensions and frictions of the patrimonialization developed by cultural heritage processes. Heritage-making occurs through the complex interactions between the global and the local, bringing together social, economic, cultural, religious, ecological, and political aspects operating in productive and even conflicting manners. The different types of heritage (tangible, natural, bio-cultural, intangible, industrial, among others) articulate the past, the present and the future amid processes of social change. Thus, they become the corner stone of how communities and human groups define their identity, build their sense of belonging, imagine the world in which they want to live, and shape the relations with each other and their environments. Anthropological theories and methods are very well placed to provide understandings and alternatives for the development of new routes capable of meeting contemporary challenges derived from intensified flows of people, ideas, images, goods and capitals in contexts of growing social and economic inequalities, environmental devastation, poverty, exclusion, and other pressing issues, including the effects of the SarsCov2 pandemic.