Paper short abstract:

My presentation will analyse the processes of inclusion and exclusion in Estonian cultural politics by considering the fate of the network of Estonian Community Houses.

Paper long abstract:

Estonian Community Houses played a vital part in Estonian national awakening in the 19th-early 20th century, as well as in the inclusion of rural population in the cultural and national developments of the country between 1920-1940. However, today, the network of Community Houses is almost unrecognised by the state institutions. Their exclusion from the list of cultural heritage has real consequences - increasingly, the Community Houses, which used to be the hubs of local life, are handed over to local NGOs which have in many cases privatises the house, therefore dispossessing the local community of its communal centre. On the one hand, I will depict the history of decline of these centres which were turned into political education centres with the coming of Soviet era, and have often declined further even after 1991. On the other hand, I will be analysing the current processes within the context of Estonian cultural politics which operates through including and excluding various phenomena on the cultural landscape based on certain assumptions and preferences.