Paper short abstract:

Selecting and listing cultures as heritage involves decontextualization. This paper examines the case of peripheral weaving communities in Indonesia, where their textiles have been recognized as part of common heritage of the nation and thus their group identities are now open to negotiation.

Paper long abstract:

When discussing cultural heritage, especially in the context of the UNESCO program, many scholars have problematized seemingly inevitable, highly politicized act of selecting. Yet another, equally problematic feature of the UNESCO designation is the creation of "a list". By being listed in the inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a certain cultural practice such as the making of crafts is taken out of the original context, including particular usage informed by its socio-cultural background; they enter a new set of relationships with other similar practices, selected by their respective governments and put into the list. As a result, these cultural practices and expressions will be "accorded a value of a different and more general kind than any value they previously had" (Hafstein 2009:104).

This process of "heritigization" may also occur within the nation-states. In the case of Indonesia, which is the focus of this paper, regional cultural expressions were endorsed by the central government as emblems of the cultural pluralism of the Republic. Carefully selected and monitored, such diversity of cultural traits was employed to consolidate the post-colonial project of national integration.

This paper will discuss the ways in which this act of selecting and listing cultures have influenced local communities and people who have made and used hand-woven textiles in the peripheral islands of eastern Indonesia. When their products become recognized as part of a common heritage of the nation, new usage and designs start to stimulate the renewed negotiation of group identities.