Paper short abstract:

UNESCO and other Western institutions define "objects" from former colonies as heritage. This paper reveals that translating "heritage" transculturally has a negative connotation for Maasai and clashes with their concept of imasaa, highlighting different understandings of materiality and temporality

Paper long abstract:

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, European colonial powers acquired ethnographic collections in the countries and communities they dominated. The UNESCO, the ICOM and other Western institutions defined these “objects" as (cultural) heritage. Based on modernity’s conception of time, which constructs a fundamental rupture between past and present, they are nostalgically categorised as “relics” of long-gone cultures. However, what conceptual difference does it make if the term „heritage" is translated transculturally and used in the context of communities of origin? What alternative means of transmitting and preserving culture do people in these communities have at their disposal that ensure a lasting and functional relationship between persons and their belongings? How do they conceive temporality and determine change over time without following an understanding of linear progressive movement of time inherent in modernity? Drawing from ethnography with Maasai communities in northern Tanzania, this paper responds to these questions to show that heritage is a contested concept. I argue that, among my Maasai interlocutors, „heritage" has a negative connotation. When used for Maasai “objects” from the colonial context that now are housed in European museums, it describes belongings stolen or taken by force through killing the owners. I show how this term caused “affective dissonances” when I applied it during my fieldwork. The term is at odds with the Maasai concept of imasaa (belongings), which is founded on a different theoretical and practical understanding of materiality, spheres of existence, and the relationship between past, present and future.