SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN THE VALUE MANIFESTATIONS AND MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

Globalisation brings similarities into the entire life of society. The response to this process is focusing on the identity problems. The present research aim is to explore attitudes towards these processes. The tasks of the research are: 1) to estimate the similar and distinctive attitudes of awareness regarding cultural heritage in Romania and Latvia; 2) to identify the most important socialization process functions of cultural heritage in both countries. The qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used for various solutions in the process of the research: a survey (Romania - n = 373; Latvia - n = 327), analysis and synthesis; logical and abstract analysis, logical construction; data grouping and comparing. The surveys were carried out in the second half of 2015. The main conclusions of the research are as follows: the understanding of historical and socio-economic value of cultural heritage is an important feature of a society in the modern world regardless of a country's location or the ethnicity of the society. The survey results revealed at least two explicit differences: in information channels where information on cultural heritage is acquired from and in shopping places for gastronomic cultural heritage products.