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- Convenors:
-
Daan Beekers
(University of Edinburgh)
Markus Balkenhol (Meertens Instituut)
Duane Jethro (University of Cape Town)
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- Discussant:
-
Chiara De Cesari
(University of Amsterdam)
- Stream:
- Irresponsibility and Failure
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Narratives about cultural heritage, conventionally linked with expectations of conviviality and peace, are increasingly marked by identitarian politics. Asking 'what are heritage ethics today', we investigate the moral underpinnings of dominant and subaltern heritage claims under this conjuncture.
Long Abstract:
What are heritage ethics today? Early narratives about cultural heritage, as espoused by UNESCO among others, were driven by ethical concerns such as conviviality, peace and universal value. These concerns have shaped key themes in twentieth century heritage studies, from the great debates about cultural and human rights, tensions between universalist ambition and particularist interests to questions of representation and ownership of cultural property.Heritage as an ethical concern has come under new pressure in the twenty-first century with the rise of nativism and cultural protectionism, manifest as populist politics, Trump's 'America First', Brexit, Islamophobia and colonial nostalgia. Heritage claims are increasingly integral to identitarian politics, exclusionary narratives and nativist claims of belonging. By asking 'what are heritage ethics today', we want to investigate if and how the moral underpinnings of heritage claims, both dominant and subaltern, have changed.To what extent are the ethical undercurrents that flow through discourses and practices of heritage - the responsibility to recognise and care for certain 'pasts', the moral imperative to remember, the emancipating or even redemptive potential ascribed to cultural heritage - shifting under this new conjuncture? How do today's heritage dynamics shape and potentially alter collective notions of rights, morality and entitlement? And does this entail a shift from universalist to particularist 'goods'? This panel seeks contributions that ethnographically illustrate these complexities and contradictions, including cases where heritage claims are considered to have gone 'too far', to be immoral or irresponsible, or those where sometimes problematic heritage claims are neutralised as ethical.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on examining controversies around the 'legitimate ownership' of the Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba. The analysis of this conflict serves as a lens to investigate the complex intertwining of identity, religion and politics in the making of heritage in contemporary Europe.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation focus on examining contemporary controversies around the ownership and historical significance of the Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba. Over the last decades, religion has acquired new relevance and visibility in Europe, which has encouraged processes of reinterpretation of European religious heritage. Amidst this scenario, particular historical places have become battlegrounds for competing narratives about European pasts, presents and future. This is the case of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, which is the most famous and visible historic site from Al-Andalus but also a Catholic Cathedral still in use. During the past decades, the Mosque-Cathedral has become an emblem for peaceful multi-religious coexistence and have increasingly played out as a powerful icon to express aspirations for religious pluralism worldwide. However, the Mosque-Cathedral has also become a site of contention and conflict, especially at the local level. The Catholic Church has strongly claimed its real and symbolic ownership over the building, and has articulated a discourse (and a tourist dispositive) re-affirming its Christian character. Populist far rights groups have also adopted this narrative, and promoted it at the national level. In parallel, local and Andalusian secularists groups have opposed church attempts to erase the Islamic past, and have claimed the right of public institutions to appropriate the building and to secularize it. The conflict around the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba serves as a privileged lens to investigate the complex intertwining of identity, religion, memory and politics in the making of heritage in contemporary Europe.
Paper short abstract:
Particularist views of heritage management in Granada, Spain, seem to be prevailing, yet narratives continue to promote universal values, and EU values reinforced by its Christian past. Recent shifts can stress the latter but have to maintain the former, making changes in ethical notions subtle.
Paper long abstract:
Closer consideration of heritage developments in Granada, Spain over the past ten years suggest that, while particularist views of heritage management have seemingly become dominant, historical narratives locally continue to promote the universal value of sites, but also continue to privilege EU values reinforced by its Christian past. Narratives tied to Muslim heritage in the city are necessarily rooted in universalist constructions due to the dual Alhambra-Albayzin UNESCO World Heritage (WHS) designation. Yet, the shift of heritage site management to a right-wing coalition government in 2018 has meant a move away from narratives that view heritage management as a responsibility to conserve, rehabilitate sites and disseminate knowledge, particularly of the Muslim past. Drawing on fieldwork in Granada and the Alhambra, I compare this recent shift towards right-wing heritage values privileging tourism and the historical narrative of the Christian Reconquest of Muslim Spain, to the 2012-2013 failed centre-left leaning bid to declare the controversial commemoration of the Day of the Capture – an annual event that marks the end of Muslim Spain – as a BIC (a ‘cultural good’). This earlier bid, despite seemingly aligning with the current shift, has not been attempted since, suggesting that particularist narratives haven’t found a widespread hold locally. I argue that because of the WHS designation and its required universalist narratives along with EU policies of dialogue and tolerance with the Arab-Islamic world, any shifts in collective concepts of rights and morality that the cultural protectionism of the political right generates are/will be extremely subtle.
Paper short abstract:
The articulation of Christian heritage in Europe entails antagonist stances towards religious communities, not just Muslim but also Christian ones. Examining two differently politicised expressions of culturalised Christianity in the Netherlands, I show how both are driven by desires for belonging.
Paper long abstract:
The re-articulation of Christian religion as national or European culture has emerged as a widespread trend in current debates about religion in Europe. This has important implications for processes of inclusion and exclusion, since, if Europe is defined in terms of its Christian heritage and identity, the question arises who is being excluded from that symbolic realm.
Taking up this question, this paper focuses on the Netherlands, a country that is at once characterised by widespread anti-religious sentiments and a growing re-orientation on Christian heritage and culture in public and political debates. The paper examines two different expressions of what can be termed ‘culturalised Christianity’: the mobilisation of Christian identity in populist politics and the embrace of Christian heritage in debates about closed and re-purposed church buildings.
Exploring the similarities and differences between these expressions, I demonstrate that the culturalisation of Christianity in the Netherlands comes with antagonist stances towards confessional religious communities, not just Muslim but also Christian ones. I further argue that while these manifestations of what can be termed identitarian Christianity and heritage Christianity differ in important ways, they share an underlying desire for rearticulating a sense of self and belonging with reference to a presumed collective past.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to analyse the relationship between institutionalised heritage and local memories through the ethnographic study of two neighbourhoods of Valencia (Spain), focusing on the ethical and political struggle to define urban narratives and local identities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the multiple uses of the past that take place on the neighbourhood scale, either by local institutions who seek to legitimise certain urban narratives, either by urban actors who strive to give meaning to the territories they inhabit. To do this, we begin by drawing a conceptual framework around the notions of heritage, memory, space and identity. Secondly, we go through the socio-historical development of two neighbourhoods of Valencia, analysing what aspects of the past are highlighted or hidden in the official narrative and reflecting on the main heritage items that are used to recall these particular memories. Thirdly, we look at how local actors relate with this institutionalised heritage and the strategies they deploy to negotiate the established narrative and the local identity. Precisely, we will analyse a Facebook page used to share memories from one of these neighbourhoods and a local festivity in which a historical workers riot is represented and commemorated. On the basis of these two cases, we conclude reflecting on the tension between global and particularist discourses that lies behind the definition of heritage and local identities.