To Share or to Keep: The Afterlife of Yugoslavia’s Heritage and the Contemporary Heritage Management Practices

This article revisits Yugoslav heritage through the example of the monumental network dedicated to the People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB), now interpreted through the lenses of contemporary heritage management practice. The monumental network of the NOB was created as a part of official identity management strategy of the state, and is unquestionably a shared heritage of the former Yugoslav region. The contemporary heritage-interpretation and management practices within the region tend to provide them with a strong national prefix, commonly disregarding their initial shared nature, and contribute to the processes of contemporary national identification. The efficient managing of the shared properties of heritage in question poses a substantial practical challenge and a burning issue in need of thorough investigation. For this purpose, this critical intervention offers one possible approach for overcoming the current issues in heritage management and interpretation practices of these memorial sites. The article analyses contemporary heritage-focused approaches which are based on performative and internet-based tools, and gives a special focus to the benefits of implementing user-generated content approaches