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- Convenors:
-
Carley Williams
(University of Aberdeen)
Tóta Árnadóttir (University of Iceland)
Fabio Mugnaini (Università di Siena)
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- Discussant:
-
Michael Foster
(University of California, Davis)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Heritage
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore professional experiences with official safeguarding efforts - dilemmas scholars face when engaging with the 2003 UNESCO Convention on ICH, and how they attempt to (re)solve them? Can "rules and measures" be symbiotic with healthy ICH, and if not, then what is the alternative?
Long Abstract:
The word "rule" refers to the verb meaning "enforcing power" and the simple instrument ensuring that straight lines are drawn and accurate measurements are made. As countries attempt to implement the UNESCO 2003 Convention on ICH, using its lists as regulated ways to "take the measure of" their respective cultural heritage, scholars may find themselves being professionally engaged to go against basic assumptions of our field. These include essential understandings of "culture in peril", often based on the perceived need to assess and describe ICH in definitive ways, to ensure that safeguarding initiatives are carried out "in the right way".
Some scholars reject involvement in processes of regulation and measures of standardization, and find themselves watching a growing "heritage enterprise" from the outside; others work within the system, bringing a critical academic perspective, contributing alternative ways of engaging with ICH. As governments become more involved in safeguarding, professional opportunities increase for scholars within our fields; many of us already experience the dual role of "official expert defining rules" and "critical observer opposing rules". How do we navigate these roles in diverse contexts, whilst attempting to interpret the ethnological oxymoron "good safeguarding practices"? Inspired by discussions during the 2020 SIEF Summer School, this panel will bring forward a variety of case studies and offer insight into the debates around measuring and ruling over living culture.
This Panel proposal is sponsored by the SIEF Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property in conjunction with the Roundtable proposal 'ICH and Higher Education'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The UNESCO’s listing system and safeguarding ICH have changed traditional principles of community transmission of cult. heritage.The influence of institutions/ethnologists keeps increasing, which brings about ethical questions and the need to review their roles and impact of new rules they create.
Paper long abstract:
Czechia had its first element inscribed on a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list in 2005. Since then, another five inscriptions have followed. Most of the inscribed elements are rooted in vernacular culture and folk tradition, which is perceived in the Czech Republic as a dominant part of the intangible cultural heritage. Folk culture of rural areas is generally regarded as the most important source of elements worthy of being inscribed in the national inventory or in a world ICH list. It determines a dual role of ethnologists as those who study ICH, and as those who are logically expected to be in the front line when it comes to its safeguarding. According to multiple experiences around the world, every inscription considerably affects the development of the inscribed element in the field. This transformation is mostly related to a new representative function which strongly influences motivations of the tradition bearers. Under such circumstances, new rules are set up. Not by local communities, but by institutions which participate in the nomination process and take on them the responsibility for the safeguarding. This gradual institutionalization may lead to critical moments, when traditional community rules are questioned and challenged by new “official” rules which may seem more important in the light of the UNESCO’s authority. Which roles do ethnologists play in these processes? Can they remain neutral or do they have to decide whose side they shall take? Their roles may even change depending on situation. Are these roles complementary of rather conflicting?
Paper short abstract:
Being involved in safeguarding efforts or remaining in the outsider's perspective, the global paradigm of heritage would influence the afterlife of ethnographic works. The heritagization's creativity is manifested in the variety of its bureaucratic systems and in the way it is composed.
Paper long abstract:
This paper offers an insight into the issues of a current fieldwork conducted in rural Hungary. The wider context is provided by the simultaneously existing "heritage regimes": the bureaucratic apparatus of UNESCO and a nation-state developed system based on the concept of ethnicity. The idea of heritage is far more prevalent among local communities than the real extensions of the bureaucratic "heritage regimes". With a global engagement the concept was improved step by step through the different conventions of UNESCO with a global engagement and became part of the common lexis at the different levels of social life. The creative use of the heritage varies from the possible reactions of the nation state to the movements at a local level. While the idea of heritage is implemented by the social actors, it is also used for their own particular purpose. Motivation leads further than the "pure" concept of heritage. In the spirit of heritage-making communities re-interpret certain elements of their past. In this process they use various types of knowledge that are products of different kinds of discourses. The position of the ethnographer - as the "engine" of the ethnographic knowledge-making - could no longer stay out of the picture since the outcome of the fieldwork may serve as row material for the actors in local heritagization processes. The knowledge constructed by the researcher may be handled with such a creative attitude which characterizes the managing of the heritage on the ground.
Paper short abstract:
When dealing with ICH, anthropologists are often asked to choose between a more "applied" and a more "fundamental" research perspective. However, the experience of fieldwork is often much more complex, which needs to question professional rules and to make them more flexible.
Paper long abstract:
As the call for papers puts it, anthropologists dealing with ICH have more and more to navigate between expertise and critical analysis. On the one hand they are asked to reinforce the UNESCO rules by helping the communities to write down their candidature files. On the other hand the disciplinary canons urge them to deconstruct the UNESCO system and to critically emphasize its limits regarding the study of the complex meanings of living cultures. Therefore, anthropologists are caught in a double-bind alternative which is often identified as an opposition between more "applied" and more "fundamental" research. However, things are never as simple as that. In this paper I will show that the rules anthropologists use to consider ICH need to be very flexible. During fieldwork, they have to train the communities to use the anthropological tools and to engage in self-criticism. Working with the institutions in charge of the implementation of ICH, they have to show how their disciplin will be helpful for cultural politics. Discussing their findings with colleagues, they need to make them understand the specificities of the field. In order to assume these multiple positions at once, they eventually need to engage in a global ethical and epistemological reflection regarding their own professional practice. Empirical material related with the inventory of ICH in France and Belgium will be used to feed our demonstration.