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- Convenors:
-
Christoph Brumann
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle)
Chiara Bortolotto (EHESS)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- C205 (access code C1864)
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 11 July, -, -, Thursday 12 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
Through ethnographic observation and textual analysis, this workshop addresses the global cultural politics of UNESCO. How do this agency's initiatives for the protection of heritage and cultural diversity arise, and how are they accommodated and subverted in national and local arenas world-wide?
Long Abstract:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has evolved into a major player in contemporary cultural politics. This is due to its older conventions for the protection of cultural properties from war damage and illicit exportation and the hugely successful World Heritage Convention but also to the two new conventions for intangible cultural heritage and cultural diversity from the 2000s. The details of UNESCO processes and policies are often little known among the public, and UNESCO decisions have very limited binding power; yet still, they ramify into national politics and local arenas world-wide, inspiring high hopes but also unclear or mistaken ideas about UNESCO's expectations. Vaguenesses and contradictions in programmatic texts do not always help to counter the confusion.
This workshop, held only kilometres away from UNESCO headquarters, addresses the global politics of the only UN specialised agency responsible for culture, our disciplinary subject matter. Is there a connecting thread through the manifold UNESCO conventions, recommendations and other activities, and what are the hidden agendas? Why is globalisation castigated so fervently and culture imagined as so vulnerable here? How do UNESCO cultural policies arise, and how are they accommodated, resisted, and creatively subverted by member states or within targeted sites and communities? We welcome ethnographic forays both into UNESCO processes and into the national and local arenas of implementation, as we also encourage critical analyses of the UNESCO textual production. What can we expect from the one global institution that shapes common views of culture most strongly today?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 11 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine the effects of the 2007 World Heritage designation on the small Japanese village of Omori, which is situated in the centre of the site of Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine and its cultural landscape. Cultural and physical changes resulting from the designation will be discussed.
Paper long abstract:
Based on fieldwork conducted in 2007-2010 and earlier visits, this study will present a chronology of changes in the lived environment and the daily lives of residents caused by World Heritage designation of the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine and its cultural landscape site. The village of Omori, located in the middle of the property, was the former administrative centre for the silver mines and an important regional nucleus, but has shrunk to a population of four hundred residents. Because of the past prominence of the village, it contains a number of historically important buildings and its main street is a preservation district under the Japanese cultural property scheme. Nevertheless, the World Heritage designation was promulgated on the basis of the long-closed mines and the property, while containing the village, is considered the relic landscape of forested mountains and primarily unexplored mines dating from the sixteenth century; it does not specify the living village as an integral part of this landscape, and thus tends to relegate it to the status of a tourist base. The relatively sudden transformation of the village from isolated mountain community to the famous destination of millions of tourists is examined from the viewpoints of those caught up in the process.
Paper short abstract:
Noticing the international popularity of the 2003 Unesco Convention, the anthropologist underline its real consequences on local scene. In this perspective, can this Convention and its consequences on local practices be considered to be a tool to better understand political and cultural tensions within society?
Paper long abstract:
In 2003, following their desire "to preserve the world's cultural diversity in a constantly changing international environment", the General Conference of Unesco adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), which as of today, has been ratified by 137 Nation-States.
Indeed, noticing the international popularity of such an agreement, the stakes and the consequences of this Convention on local scene are real. What effect does this Convention have on the local sphere and what do these local actions tell about the society in which they are practiced? Can this Convention and its consequences be considered to be a tool to better understand political and cultural tensions within society?
To answer these questions, first of all I will draw upon my experiences from an internship within the ICH office to answer these questions. I will focus my analysis on the internal negotiations exercised by Unesco to register a cultural practice on the representative list of the ICH. This will allow me to compare the speeches with the practices exercised by the organization and to understand the tension of such a global society as Unesco. Subsequently, I will concentrate on the impact of these global actions on local communities in Guadeloupe with the Gwoka practice and in La Réunion with the Maloya to better understand the utilization of the Convention by local actors.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to present the case study of the Zafimaniry of Madagascar, a group of swidden cultivators whose excellent skills for woodcarving and sculpting have been inscribed on the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO in 2008.
Paper long abstract:
The Zafimaniry are a community of swidden cultivators who live in the montane forests of central Madagascar. As a result of their emplacement in what once was dense primary forest, this group has developed excellent skills for woodcarving and sculpting, which have been inscribed on the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO in 2008. This declaration has drawn great attention on this small and isolated community increasing, beside other things, their touristic popularity and the demand for their crafts. However, beyond the optimism that this international recognition seemed to favour, it seems a paradox that the UNESCO inscription arrived while everywhere in Madagascar the issue of forest conservation is in the eye of the storm.
The aim of this paper, part of an ongoing research project for a doctoral thesis, is to reflect upon the reactions of Zafimaniry villagers to the UNESCO declaration: how they live it, interpret it, relate to it, accept it or resist it. The inscription of Zafimaniry woodcrafting skills on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage led to a process of formalization of their knowledge that pretend to preserve it from contaminating and disappearing. Beyond that, however, it has revealed an arena where multiple actors stake their interests, bringing to a confrontation for different conceptions of identity and culture: on one hand, culture and identity as something stable, compact and extremely vulnerable; on the other, as notions that include adaptation and change.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the recent hyper-evaluation of Macanese ethnic and cultural identity under way in Macao, a Special Administrative Region of China. The goal is to obtain Intangible Cultural World Heritage status, and to achieve coherence for reconstructing this identity today.
Paper long abstract:
The small bilingual (Portuguese and Cantonese) Macanese community preserves profound links with the former Portuguese colony of Macao in China. Historically, the Macanese community emerged out of complex historical phenomena of the blending of European (mostly Portuguese) and Southeast Asian elements, from the sixteenth century onwards. This blending gave rise to a Eurasian appearance, and developed "hybrid" cultural traditions.
Drawing on fieldwork in Lisbon and Macao, I'll analyse the efforts and initiatives of several Macanese associations and fraternities to recover, preserve, and rebuild the elements that characterize the "uniqueness" of Macanese identity. These efforts consubstantiate a clear strategy that has evolved since the Macao handover from Portugal, and is now "instituted" in the "new" context of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (RAEM). The "retrieval" and "protection" of a cultural and ethnic Macanese identity - such as the group's singular gastronomy and patuá dialect - is intimately associated with the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) application project of cultural legitimisation.
This paper shall explore the complexity of the cultural politics and identity issues that can surround intangible heritage and ask is the 2003 ICH Convention capable of addressing the cultural complexity of Macanese heritage? I argue that contemporary practices of intangible heritage make the imminence of the consequences of heritage practices for local communities' political and cultural aspirations more obvious and apparent. If nothing more, the idea of Macanese intangible heritage forces a recognition of cultural heritage because of the immediacy of its production and consumption.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyze the Italian national politics of heritage in the “UNESCO age”, and the inventories of Intangible Cultural Heritage produced for the inclusion to the UNESCO Representative List. Two cases will be presented: the nominees of the Mediterranean Diet and the Palio of Siena.
Paper long abstract:
In Italy the inventory of so-called "ethnoanthropological heritage", both tangible and intangible has its own specific history within national policies on cultural heritage. These inventories are based on an objectivistic conception of "heritage" (that heritage exists independently of the theoretical framework we employ) and until very recently they had only a very marginal relationship with the communities.
Over the last year, this scenario has changed with the arrival of UNESCO nominees for inclusion in the Representative List, which involved individual communities in defining their intangible heritage. With the increasing number of nominations and to comply with Article 12 of the Convention (Italy ratified the Convention in 2007) that required intangible heritage to be inventoried, the Ministry of Culture (MIBAC) forced the "communities" who proposed nominations to fill out the inventory for their own nominated heritage.
In order to explore the various and oftentimes conflictual dynamics and the diverse "communities" involved, two disparate examples of inventories in "the UNESCO age" will be presented. One is an inventory produced entirely from "on high" as part of a national (and transnational) nomination - the Mediterranean Diet - in which "community", in the UNESCO sense, had no role to play; while the second case represents a very significant instance of grass-roots commissioning of the inventory - the Palio of Siena horse race, whose nomination has had a very complex history.
Paper short abstract:
This contribution proposes to investigate some anthropological predicaments engendered by the UNESCO initiated programmes under the aegis of safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage, and being contextualized in the emergent heritage regimes, institutionalized power and grassroots politics.
Paper long abstract:
This analysis of cultural politics investigates relations between engaged professionals, the communities, the state and UNESCO in the contingencies of globalization, postcolonial empowerment, cross-cultural relations, and heritage management. Cultural heritage, as a value-laden project of ideology plays on the category of time while making claims for ownership and generating hierarchical selections of expressive forms or cultural practices. The employment of the notion of 'heritage' comprises a capacity to overshadow the complexities of history and politics. My contribution proposes to investigate some anthropological predicaments engendered by the UNESCO initiated projects and programmes under the aegis of safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage. They'll be contextualized in the emergent heritage regimes, institutionalized power and grassroots politics.The UNESCO initiatives ambivalently resort to ethnographic expertise in defining the field and identifying the aspects of concern, or, ambivalently, of celebration, but the global organization eventually operates via governmental mediation. Thus this intervention that generates, or re-shifts and complicates explicit and implicit hierarchies in/for the communities involved simultaneously denies them international representation outside of the state advocacy. However, an reflexive anthropological investigation of the grassroots levels of engagement in cultural politics reveals enabling moments of contestation and potentials for agency in the context of intangible heritage despite the prerequisite of authoritative representation.
Paper short abstract:
Considering the Historic Urban Landscapes recommendation adopted by UNESCO, we'll put in question the heritage policies towards the uncertain territorial situations arising in a globalization context. Taking brazilian context, we’ll focus on how those policies are considered by an emerging country culture.
Paper long abstract:
UNESCO progressively reviews its normative schedule to insure the perpetuity of the Human World Heritage sites. Today, the new heritage territories situations between identity markers and urban development, generated by the effects of globalization, no longer fit in UNESCO's normative frame whose last recommendation about urban sites dates from 1976.
The proposed paper focuses on the recent recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes, passed by UNESCO in 2011 as a possible measure to both insure a control on unstable evolutions of urban and historic sites and to prepare those sites for future urban challenges.
We'll then focus on the rejected proposition, for the reorientation of this recommendation towards a new category entitled Urban Cultural Landscapes, proposed by some Brazilian institutional actors during the 34th session in Brasilia in 2010. Our aim will be to underline the contradictions and missed subjects of this recommendation in relation to the local context of the emerging countries.
Finally, we'll question UNESCO's role as major actor of the international cultural policies. Can a culture be considered vulnerable only on the base of its unpredictable evolutions? What happens to cultures which make uncertainty their main characteristic? Is an increased production of normative texts a solution for disquiet? How the statutory answer proposed by UNESCO to face heritage uncertainties can create exclusions and lead to cultural homogenization?
This paper is based on an ethnographic fieldwork made in UNESCO, the Heritage Brazil National Institute (IPHAN) and Rio de Janeiro habitants' daily context since 2010, through interviews and textual analysis.