A NEW APPROACH IN MANAGEMENT OF HERITAGE FOR TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: THE PAIDEIA APPROACH

Abstract

This article supports the idea that the archaeological heritage and knowledge produced through its study may be a key component in the process of sociocultural and economic development for communities, representing also the starting point for intercultural / inter-religious peaceful relationships. This concept, which we call PAIDEIA APPROACH to the heritage management as a vehicle for social and economic development, is indeed inspired by the Aristotelian idea of ???????, whereby the people become free - and ready to meet "the other"- only through knowledge of oneself, in other words, one’s cultural heritage, considering archaeology as a key part of this. We strongly believe this idea can and has to be applied specifically in the management of cultural heritage as a new focus of development. This proposal falls within the current debate about the need for new paradigms of development: the present global socioeconomic imbalances have shown that the paradigms adopted so far have been inadequate in all viewpoints (economic, environmental, sociocultural). The specific objective of this paper is to present the work, begun in 2006, which led to the development of Paideia Approach and, from this perspective, to focus specifically on the concept of a revisited alliance between archaeology and tourism.