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- Convenors:
-
Fátima Amante
(Universidade de Lisboa, Institute of Social and Political Sciences, Centre for Public Administration and Public Policies)
Arsenio Dacosta (Universidad de Salamanca)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Heritage
- Location:
- B2.22
- Sessions:
- Thursday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
This panel sets out to reflect on the political economy of memory and its relationship with borders' intangible heritage. What ideological and material criteria govern patrimonialization processes? We invite papers dealing with ethnographic and conceptual approaches to the panel topics.
Long Abstract:
Notwithstanding the transformation borders have undergone in the last decades, living on the border usually meant being removed from political and economic centers. Their historical and geopolitical configuration, located at the end of state territory, frequently resulted in territories sparsely populated, therefore overlooked by State's policy. Differently from the States who perceived borders as more or less inert political lines, people living on the borderlands saw it as a resource, taking advantage of its presence. Border crossing for petty smuggling perceived as an illegal activity by the State came to be understood as a way to resist the perils of living on the hinterland and the economic uncertainty it generates. For economically vulnerable people living on the periphery, the border itself became a resource, producing activities and subjectivities such as smugglers, commuters, and cross-border shoppers. These and other experiences with the border are important mnemonics and local identity traits that have been put to use in the present. Hence, past communitarian experiences with the border have been obsessively reinterpreted and appropriated by both local political institutions and local people through processes of patrimonialization of intangible heritage such as smuggling museums, the transformation of old smugglers routes in trekking paths, theatrical performances of everyday life at the border, etc. We find that this has been done in an astonishingly uncritical way, revealing the political economy of memory. The patrimonialization and touristification of the border's intangible heritage sidelines a past of violence and the trauma related to living on the border.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 8 June, 2023, -Lijing Peng (Trinity College Dublin)
Paper short abstract:
The Dege county in Kham Tibet is an important borderland between Han and Tibetan cultures and politics in China, and also a pilgrimage centre. My study investigates how local people live with multi-layer uncertainties with resilience, through a sociopolitical investigation of epic performances.
Paper long abstract:
The Derge county in Kham Tibet has since the 15th century been a borderland and pilgrimage centre between imperial China and ancient Tibetan kingdoms. Since the 20th century it remains an important borderland and pilgrimage centre between Han regions and the Tibetan Autonomous Region. With a study of epic performances, I look into the inner tension of value systems that belong to different authorities and to the individuals who perform the everyday religious practices.
Performance of Tibetan Epic Gesar is a UNESCO cultural heritage which features a pervasive system of practices involving the dissemination of religious and cultural knowledge. Besides the chanting of this mythic tale, prayers to King Gesar both as a part of performances and as everyday religious practices are inseparable from this epic tradition. Being enlisted by the UNESCO has profoundly changed the way this epic tradition is received and transmitted by local people and authorities. And the game between local religious authority’s enshrining King Gesar and national institute’s objectifying epic performances as cultural capital also started. The debates derive from its dual function of being both an index of national cultural diversity and a local religious sign. My fieldwork will present everyday religious practices and epic performances in the Dege county, which is supplemented by archival studies of local histories. The practices and preservation of Epic Gesar in Dege reflect complex economic and political structures embedded in this borderland. And my study shows how people live under multi-layer uncertainties in this political landscape with resilience.
Arsenio Dacosta (Universidad de Salamanca)
Paper short abstract:
Our work attempts to analyse, comparatively, the discursive design of different museums focusing on European immigration to America in the contemporary period, with examples from both sides of the Atlantic.
Paper long abstract:
The most transcendental phenomenon of the Contemporary Age up to the present day is transnational migration. Among them, one of the most important, persistent and impactful flows has been the successive waves from "Old Europe" to America, flows which, for the so-called period of "mass emigration" (1880-1930), number in the tens of millions of people. The impact of this emigration has been and is absolutely transcendent in many countries from a quasi-mythological discursiveness (such as the "melting pot" in the USA or "branquitude" in Brazil). At the end of the 20th century, in several American and European countries, projects began to develop musealisation projects of the migratory experience to America (in the case of the emblematic Ellis Island, this began in 1982). In most cases, the museums are located in ports of departure or arrival, in facilities recovered from the points of access of immigrants to the frontiers of their new homelands, multiplying the symbolic role of their configuration. Our work aims to compare the discursive axes of the reference museum institutions in this field in order to find the transoceanic points of connection but also the significant differences in the interpretation of this recent past. The initial sample includes institutions from Argentina, Brazil, the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Portugal. These models, mainly from a discursive perspective, will be analysed with projects currently under design such as the Archive-Museum of the Emigration of Castile and Leon (Spain). The conference will be given in Spanish.
Keywords: transnational migrations, museums, access point, discursivity, cultural heritage.
Jaime Benmergui (University of Salamanca)
Paper short abstract:
Throughout the past decades -once democracy is restored in Portugal and Spain-, different projects related to the memorialization of the presence of Jewish communities during the Middle Ages have been consolidating along the border, better known as "La Raya".
Paper long abstract:
Throughout the past decades -once democracy is restored in Portugal and Spain-, different
projects related to the memorialization of the presence of Jewish communities during the
Middle Ages have been consolidating along the border, better known as "La Raya".
Museums, congresses, creation of tourist routes through some of the old Jewish quarters or
interpretation centers are some of the witnesses that prove this growing interest in
patrimonializing the Sephardic vestiges along the Iberian Peninsula. This paper explores, on the one hand, the ways in which the revitalization of this Jewish past is part of a broader process where the territory is linked to
certain historical processes, thus constructing a narrative of its own that allows these places
to acquire a marginal value in the phase of post-Fordist tourism in which we currently find
ourselves. On the other hand, it is intended to reflect on how this touristification on both sides of "La Raya", to build a scenario of apparent diversity where the voices of the protagonists are unearthed from history to be
monopolized by a process of Heritagisation exercised by local agents, thus building a
Jewishness without Jews. In addition, the ways in which the narratives around crypto-Judaism
are constructed in both peninsular States are analyzed, using this motif as an excuse to analyze
from which communicating vessels the coexistence between these Hebrew and Christian
communities is presented, both before and after the expulsion that took place at the
beginning of the Modern Age.
Fátima Amante (Universidade de Lisboa, Institute of Social and Political Sciences, Centre for Public Administration and Public Policies)
Paper short abstract:
I will adress processes and practices of patrimonialization of immaterial culture related with the border focusing on individual and social agency in reinventing practices, searching for an articulation with tourism.
Paper long abstract:
Old paths across the border, reconfigured and re-signified as smuggling routes, are - along with the cosntruction of Smuggling Museums - one of the most common local strategies for the symbolic representation of border culture, identity and memory. Along the Portuguese-Spanish border it is possible to identify routes built from ancient smugglers' paths that constitute, for the locals, on the one hand, a plunge into the past, necessary to think about themselves, individually and collectively, and, on the other, an openness to what they believe to be the future: the revitalization of the border area through tourism. Ethnographic research in Portuguese and Spanish communities on the Portuguese-Spanish border (Beira Interior Norte and Castilla Y Léon) has allowed us to identify discursive expressions that point towards the persistence of the social and political value of the border and the relationships that were formed in and from it. These strategies involve self-narratives, the musealization of smuggling, the activation of smugglers' paths as a product - the smuggling routes -, and the patrimonialization of local social practices that are directly related to the border. The communication explores forms of appropriation and reconfiguration of the border and its value, in particular, the commodification of the idea of border through the way in which paths were reconfigured locally, transforming them into products - the smuggling route - capable of attracting urban populations that they don't have any experience.