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- Convenors:
-
Ioana Baskerville
(Romanian Academy - Iasi Branch)
Robert Baron (Goucher College)
Carley Williams (University of Aberdeen)
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- Format:
- Panel+Roundtable
Short Abstract:
Writing is a primary form and formality of heritage-making in both ethnographically based research and cultural policy. What are the professional and ethical norms and solutions to better embody representations of living heritage grounded in scholarship within official texts?
Long Abstract:
The writing tradition of social science research translates and transforms cultural realities into textual descriptions. This framework is being taken to greater reaches with the rising recognition of living cultural practices within national and international heritage-making policies. Though academics are typically not involved as scribes of local cultures serving this powerful writing diplomacy, in recent critical heritage scholarship they are reflecting, observing and amending the underpinnings and challenges of this increasingly specialized heritage writing. And some are shaping these texts in dual roles as scholar/practitioners and policy advisors. How are they effecting change in official policymaking contexts?
How can we, as scholars, foster more critical involvement into living heritage writing in policymaking, heritage research, and within UNESCO frameworks? What are the recognised, or emerging, best practices for keeping heritage dynamics thriving against this unavoidable objectivization and textual transformation? How do classical heritage institutions devoted to storing texts (archives, museums) shape contemporary strategies of recording living heritage utilising their competencies for handling historical documents? What are their limitations, professional ethics, and safeguarding protocols to exercise their writing heritage power? What other writing agencies, writers, voices, and views could these movements integrate and empower to generate more credibility and diversity? Is heritage-writing ready to embrace more dynamic methods, that could offer less-filtered testimony to represent ever-changing cultural life?
This panel welcomes critical analysis and case studies reflecting on current and prospective heritage writing practices. Scholars involved in heritage interpretation and praxis are invited to share their experiences and solutions.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines the dynamic interplay between institutional frameworks and local actors in the heritagization of music practices in Slovenia. The focus is on how local communities independently reinterpret and reshape heritage to align with their cultural identities and priorities.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper explores the processes by which local communities adapt musical practices to reflect their cultural identities, social values and economic priorities, often prioritising tourism and marketability. Such adaptations produce fluid and evolving forms of heritage that may deviate from the rigid, standardised criteria set by institutions, but resonate deeply with contemporary community needs.
Drawing on examples from the Upper Savinja Valley in Slovenia, the research highlights how certain practices have historically been marginalised within institutional heritage discourses, despite their strong resonance with local populations. Conversely, the popularity of certain musical practices within and beyond the community often shapes local perceptions of what constitutes heritage. The popularity of these practices is leading to the abandonment of some past traditions, which are now officially recognised as heritage practices and included in Slovenia's Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The paper raises questions about the relationship between local and institutional heritagization practices, including challenges in representation and the participation of local bearers. Based on case studies, the research advocates the possibilities for compromises, dialogue, and understanding between institutional and grassroots processes (and products) of heritagization.
Contribution short abstract:
The author critiques the so called linguified films on the UNESCO ICH website that are based on statements by experts or on the off commentary with description from the nomination form. She calls for the complementarity of written and visual modes in heritage research and within UNESCO frameworks.
Contribution long abstract:
UNESCO promotes the mediatisation of intangible heritage: members of the Evaluation Body and participants at sessions of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage do not get to know the heritage elements and their practitioners in local environments, but only virtually – according to data in the nomination form, photographs and film. The author participates in documenting and presenting intangible cultural heritage with films based on visual ethnography, in close cooperation with heritage practitioners. In collaborative film productions they can mediate their (emic) practices, skills and testimonies to UNESCO’s evaluators and the viewers of the UNESCO website. She critiques the construction of knowledge in the linguified films that are based either on (etic) statements by experts or on the off commentary quoting the heritage element’s description from the nomination form. She calls for the complementarity of written and visual modes both in heritage research and within UNESCO frameworks.
Key words: film, intangible heritage, visual ethnography, participation, mediatisation
Contribution short abstract:
This paper focusses on the tension between critical heritage studies and work practices of heritage implementing institutions. Through a case study on heritage-writing, I will share some of the questions and limitations that arise when translating critical heritage studies into practice.
Contribution long abstract:
As a scholar with expertise in critical heritage studies working at a heritage institution tasked with implementing the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the question of unwriting or effecting change is never far from my mind. My workplace, the Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage (KIEN), is tasked with inventorying and safeguarding ICH in the Netherlands. Following UNESCO's listing practices, it does so through transforming living heritage into texts and images that are uploaded on a website. Last year, myself and other scholars working at KIEN began to examine the procedures, heritage practices and (unconscious) assumptions that underline them, from the perspective of critical heritage studies. This inspired a process of critical reflection in which we are currently rethinking and redeveloping KIEN's heritage policies, including KIEN's heritage-writing practices.
Valuable as this critical self-reflection proved to be, it also made visible the tension that exists between critical heritage studies on the one hand, and KIEN as a heritage implementing institution on the other. It raises the question of how we can ever overcome the tension between thinking (which is about analyzing, questioning and deconstructing relations of power) and doing (which by nature is a relation of power). It is precisely this tension that this paper takes as its subject. Through a case study on our critical reflection on KIEN's heritage writing practices, I want to share some of the questions and limitations that arise when trying to translate critical heritage studies into practice.
Contribution short abstract:
Based on my work as a heritage consultant and researcher, this presentation reflects on the network which constitutes heritage, the balancing of commitments and translations as cultural broker, and the rewriting of heritage texts to enable an informed heritage discourse.
Contribution long abstract:
Many individuals and institutions are involved in the implementation process of the ICH Convention, from heritage communities to researchers, politicians or media. In this complex network of actors, objects, spaces, translations, knowledge practices, evaluations, etc., ‘living heritage’ is constructed, negotiated and passed on. This means that there is no heritage or community that exist in themself while being researched or evaluated from the outside. Rather, knowledge, skills and practices are also part of recirculations of academic knowledge, political or media formations. The proposed presentation suggests analysing the dynamics of this network, particularly the role of academics, NGO members or consultants as cultural brokers.
The presentation is based on my work as a heritage consultant and researcher, in which I support heritage communities in the application process on the one hand, and conduct research on cultural expressions, communities, cultural policy and the implementation process, on the other. As a cultural broker, I have to balance at least four commitments to the heritage communities, politics, the scientific community and the media/public, which requires translations between these groups with different texts, languages and representations. It also requires a critical reflection on the self-representation of the cultural heritage communities, the academic texts, the political texts of UNESCO and the Focal Points, etc. From this point of view, there is no fixed “text” on living heritage, but a continuous writing and rewriting. The multiple roles and viewpoints of cultural brokerage thus enable an “informed heritage discourse”, helping to establish heritage as a field of discourse.