Towards a Reasoned Glossary of Green Conservation: A Semantic Review of Green-Oriented Terms in the Field of Cultural Heritage

Davide Del Curto and Anna Turrina ()
Additional contact information
Davide Del Curto: Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic of Milan, 20133 Milan, Italy
Anna Turrina: Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic of Milan, 20133 Milan, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 16, 1-19

Abstract: The concept of green conservation has become a popular expression in parallel to the inflated development of innovative green practices and products for cultural heritage. However, the absence of a consistent definition of emerging green concepts does not prevent the dilution of the terms in scientific research and commercial propaganda. On this basis, this article discusses the several meanings of the concept of green conservation and its related terms toward a viable and comprehensive definition. The semantic analysis relies on the identification of different sources to evaluate the coherence of the meanings in usage in scientific and non-scientific domains. Search terms—such as “bio”, “eco”, and “green”—were collected and classified into lemmas of emerging constructs. Lastly, two glossaries resulting from the two main sources provide a comparative analysis to evaluate the degree of intersection and divergence among equal terms. The research drew from over 100 studies and five international databases to generate a hierarchical classification among 220 constructs and to identify six definitions of green conservation. This paper contributes to greater clarity and encourages a semantic discussion toward a common vision for a green conservation perspective for future research and informed preservation practice.

Keywords: green conservation; cultural heritage; terminology; sustainability; greenness; green materials; standardization; databases (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/16/12104/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/16/12104/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:16:p:12104-:d:1212483

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().