Isnart Cyril and Catrina Sonia 2014. Introduction: Mapping the Moving Dimensions of Heritage,...

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 11(2)/2014: 7–17

7

Introduction: Mapping the Moving Dimensions

of Heritage

Sonia Catrina Institute of Ethnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania [email protected]

Cyril Isnart

Institute of Mediterranean, European and Comparative Ethnology (IDEMEC) National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Aix-en-Provence, France

[email protected] “Cultural heritage” is a complex notion, having evolved over time from the “legacy of the father” to the “legacy of a particular group”, to finally expand and become the “legacy of the entire humanity.” The new devel-opments in “heritage” are due to the UNESCO International Conven-tions which updated the definition of heritage, by incorporating the vari-ous changes which occurred lately under the incidence of globalization, deindustrialisation, post-colonialism and touristification. It was the 1972 “Convention on the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” that stated the “outstanding universal value” of heritage and its profound signifi-cance “for all of humanity.”

Regardless of its established attributes or features: material/tangible (from monuments, historic buildings and religious landscapes, to docu-mentary, artistic, ethnographic, scientific, social, industrial or technical items) or immaterial/intangible (from mythologies, customs and festivals to spiritual memories), cultural heritage is supposed to relate to the iden-tity of a specific community. It refers to presumed shared values and “collective memories” (Halbwachs, 1952), being an instrument of identi-ty legitimization. Therefore, it is supposed to play a social and political role, towards the cultural domain (Lowenthal, 1985; Harvey, 2001; Smith, 2006; Poulot, 2006).

Talking about cultural heritage means bringing up the politics of the past, present and future and the processes of nation-building, as Laura-jane Smith (2006) pointed out, by using the concept of “the authorized heritage discourse.” It is already acknowledged that “collective memory” – especially national memory – is constructed, politicised and present-

Sonia Catrina & Cyril Isnart / Mapping the Moving Dimensions of Heritage

8

oriented (Nora, 1992). From this perspective, the ideological construc-tion of “collective identity” through heritage intended to foster common understanding of the past and social cohesion inside a nation that coin-cides with a certain territory, political power and society.

To warrant its social efficacy, cultural heritage has to be selected ac-cording to value criteria established by specialists (in accordance with ac-ademic principles, be they related to aesthetic, historical, ethnological or anthropological values). The process of granting value to particular re-sources through both scientific and social criteria unveils the making of heritage – called heritagisation. However, the selection process can vary from one state to another, from one (sub-)group to another, from one law system to another, from one socio-religious context to another. Moreover, the selection process of heritage resources is oriented by so-cial, cultural and economical constraints, leading sometimes to dissimilar views on value criteria (even opposing ones). Therefore, a critical analysis of such procedures – different “agents” granting value to various re-sources – is required.

At a smaller scale, although it seems to be “consensual” in institutional practices, the making of heritage involves conflicts, tension, negotiations and compromise amongst actors engaged with its selection and preserva-tion (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Noyes, 2003; Bondaz, Leblon and Isnart, 2012). It deals with power relations, control and authority. When heritage is produced “under the state-authority” (Hertz and Chappaz-Wirthner, 2012) with the aim of creating a unitary image of what national identity has to be, “conventional” criteria of selection and value judg-ments are being imposed from top to bottom. Still, when an “axiology of cultural heritage” (Heinich, 2010-2011) is forged, heritagisation becomes rather hegemonic, ruling the social and political order (Bendix, Eggert and Peselmann, 2013).

Besides, as nations are not stable and suffer alterations, their cultural heritage does not refer to a static domain either. On the contrary, it is subjected to changes and re-making in order to answer present needs projected for the future. For instance, in response to slavery, colonisa-tion or civil wars, heritage is supposed to contribute to repairing self-esteem, being a tool for reconciliation. At the same time, cultural heritage along with natural heritage are also called to be a valuable tourism re-source to producing new socio-cultural and economic developments (Kirchenblatt-Gimblet, 1998; Gravari-Barbas and Graburn, 2011). Fur-


9

thermore, attacks, damages and contestations of the patrimonial items prove that values associated with heritage are not universal and may be contested. In this respect, pieces of art destructions for religious and po-litical reasons, like the French Revolution attacks on catholic heritage at the end of 18th c., the destructions of the Budhas of Bamiyan, or more recently Timbuktu shrines in Mali, are significant examples of what cul-tural heritage means for people at the head of social movements.

Heritagisation as “coercive” process, as Susan Ashley mentions in her paper presented in this volume, seems to lead to conflicting views on “historical consciousness” and on what collective identity means. De(re)constructed by outsiders, minorities or subgroups that are engag-ing with heritage-making, national identity gains new connotations. When new representations about cultural heritage are brought into play outside the institutional and “state-authorized” heritage-making, the “conventional” manners of framing collective identity are challenged or contested. As a consequence, patrimonial selection and heritage display differ from the standardized models promoted by the “museums of the nation” (Pomian, 1991; Poulot, 1997). Given that local communities, minorities or diaspora-type communities endorse new definitions of her-itage or recycle the classical ones, such initiatives of making heritage, which gain more visibility in the public sphere, are worth being analysed by researchers (among others, Herzfeld, 1991; Rautenberg, 2003; Four-cade and Legrand, 2008; Moor and Pell, 2010; Isnart, 2012; Catrina, 2014). To get a sense of lay (ie. non-academic, non-professional or non-standardized) approaches to heritage and their relationship to state and academic heritage constructions, empirical research has taken into con-sideration the “performative” (Smith, 2006) nature of “dissonant herit-age” (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996).

However, recently, not only the already-established categories of herit-age have been criticized by a number of scholars, such as its intangible features, but also the issues of power and domination in action within the Western cultural heritage systems, amongst states, ethnic or religious groups, or even amongst different kinds of goods (see Harvey, 2013; Ashley, 2005).

As heritage is considered as a mutable concept and heritage-making as a mechanism that shifts across time, space and social groups, the ques-tion of what heritage and heritagisation currently means, either in institu-tional or social practices, still remains partially unexplained. Thus, the


10

relevance of such mechanisms in terms of culture, memories and values or positioning inside mainstream societies is of a paramount importance that has to be further addressed, along with the questions of ethic, mo-rality and emotions at play in identity settings.

The functions and work of cultural heritage we summarised in the first section allow us to reassess heritage-making in contemporary contexts. The scholars having contributed to this issue basically seek to challenge the classical understandings of the heritage logics and tools which struc-ture “collective memory,” as it was the case of nation-building in the last two centuries.

Firstly, we wanted to deal with the difficult question: What “heritage” refers to? Contemporary scholars are using it as a shared and transparent concept. However, people give different meanings to heritage, using equivalent words such as identity, culture, folklore, tradition, masterpiec-es, crafts, environment, memory, or simply things of the past (see Kirchenblatt-Gimblett, 1995; Harvey, 2001; Noyes, 2005; Bendix, 2009 or Tornatore, 2014 who tried to make the critical philology of various uses of heritage). Giving this matter scholars from Humanities and Social Sciences must face, we allowed our contributors to make use of their own understandings of heritage, in order to provoke contrasting and echoing effects for the readers of this special issue.

Secondly, instead of relying on international conventions and laws, we wanted to focus our attention on the local stages where cultural heritage is in action – either state-established or dissident contexts. We consid-ered that a memory-identity-heritage-territory interplay needed to be linked to the social diversity of the “heritage communities,” from aca-demic and nation-state institutions to private, ordinary and non-academic organisms, groups or isolate individuals taking care of the representa-tions of the past.

Finally, we considered that the moving dimensions of cultural heritage and its ideologies have been sometimes underestimated because the “hegemonic” paradigms constructed under the state-power were directly linked with certain territories and groups. Contrary to a static dimension of heritage, we believe that cultural items, devices and values are always on the move, being dissimilar from one social category to another, from one place to another, from one ethnic group to another.

Such exchanges, challenges, tensions, interferences or cooperation be-tween “official” and “un-official” layouts of heritage-making (following


11

the vocabulary of Harrison, 2013) may provide new approaches to con-temporary identity settings, seen from a comparative perspective. Taking into account the moving dimensions of cultural heritage leads to focus on the social use-value circulation of “collective memories” between the professional and folk spheres, through different and diversified institu-tions, actors and processes. Some people or groups adopt the museum language, others claim the right to heritage, and professionals of culture need to include visitors and representatives of indigenous people in the museum processes. The rules according to which a good or a technique might enter “cultural schemes” or be displayed out of the established in-stitutions are moving, at least, as much as the archaeological pieces shown in the cabinets de curiosités and the Western universal museums. Ac-knowledging the moving nature of cultural heritage should provide us with better tools to deal with the more and more circulating world in which we are living.

The papers gathered in this volume deal with the re-constructions, us-es, transmissions and negotiations of “collective memories” in various identity settings. They focus on the dynamics of heritage-making, map-ping the inventory of symbols and strategies retained, selected and ma-nipulated by various actors to set compelling identities inside their main-stream society. The common argument of inter-disciplinary approaches is to highlight new patrimonial configurations that take shape in con-temporary societies, and to provide insights into the issue of mobility, mediation, circulation and re-cycling at work in cultural heritage agencies. Such cross-social and cross-cultural movements involve the analysis of the plural, negotiated, conflicting and moving aspects of heritage-making in different contexts of its production.

By suggesting to our authors to scrutinise alternative views on heritage compared to the official ones, our objective was to put different concep-tions of “collective identity” in dialogue, in order to illustrate the diversi-ty of representations about cultural heritage, from the nation-state’s en-deavour to give a shared sense to “collective identity,” to the individuals’, minorities’, diasporas’ or local communities’ competing glances on herit-age as a self-knowledge process granting meaning of their identity as well.

The paper of Nicolito A. Gianan opens up the debate with mostly a theoretical approach on what heritagisation means and implies, as one of the basic and shared human activity. The author inscribes the practices


12

and the values of cultural heritage in the greater issue of performances and power, through what Ludwig Wittengstein used to call “language games.” The focus is here on the implications and the need to think her-itage-making as a social practice that circulates among people and that makes things, representations and people circulate. This view leads to a better understanding of the role of the actors as individuals, the social structures as power institutions and the cultural differences imposed be-tween groups and nations. However, Harvey (2001) already demonstrat-ed that heritage is to be considered as a verb or a process. In his view, this word does not mean or designate a material object, but a way of dealing with things of the past. In this respect, the contribution of Nico-lito A. Gianan philosophically reflects on the uses of cultural heritage as both a universal and differentiating tool for social life, transmission and dynamics.

A large part of the following papers deals with the problem of authori-ty, power and cultural differences, or the negotiation of ownership of heritage, the conflicts of representations, practices and discourses, from the State and international organizations to social groups, elites or indi-vidual actors.

Surveying the case of the Sikh Heritage Museum developed by Indo-Canadians in Abbotsford, Susan L.T. Ashley investigates the interference between “historical consciousness” relevant for Canadian society and immigrant communities’ sense of their identity within their new country. More precisely, the author examines the extent to which Indo-Canadians’ subjectivities incorporate Canadian “authorised” discourse on identity. By interrogating the idea of power in setting identity and the “coercive aspects” of heritagisation, on the one hand, and the “affective meaning” of belonging, on the other hand, the Sikh Heritage Museum illustrates the tensions and negotiations inside the Canadian nation. By considering the identity of the Canadian Sikh community as a “discursive tool” being enacted in formal or informal displays, Susan L.T. Ashley examines the impact of the “affective and emotional rhetoric” promoted by Canadian authorities on Sikh community-led heritage. By articulating identity and nationalism, her paper investigates the changing of the power relations in Canadian heritage constructions when lay voices challenge the national museum’s power and authority to decide on the national narratives. Moreover, it raises the question of “social cohesion” inside mainstream societies and it points out that public identity discourse could overturn


13

the “symbolic power” of the Canadian state to produce “authorized her-itage discourses.”

Michel Rautenberg and Sarah Rojon offer a comparison between two post-industrial regions of Europe (Saint-Étienne in France and Swansea in Wales, UK) where they studied the cultural activism on industrial memory and heritage, focussing on non-institutional digital and Web 2.0 agency. As cultural heritage has entered the neo-capitalism principles, the authors suggest an alternative view on cultural heritage-making at the digital times: ordinary people engaging with heritage are now “prosum-ers,” both producers and consumers. Values, goods and people are circu-lating more easily and faster. Photography, blogging, sharing and collect-ing become common and banal practices, with or without institutional support, and contribute to create a new social space for cultural and memory claims. In sum, they establish a new laboratory of experimenta-tion for cultural mediation. Digital cultural activism also challenge the museology and conservation methodologies down and open, the authors facetiously proposed, the Do It Yourself industrial heritage.

Inspired by Philip Thomas’s approach to “authenticity” according to which consumption entails “appropriation” and “recontextualization” of meanings, uses, and values, Vintil Mih ilescu examines the “symbolic life of houses in the particular context of the Romanian post-socialist and post-peasant society.” His analysis provides insights into the multi-dimensional characteristics of “authenticity”. By focusing on the “pride houses” owners’ agency in constructing “authenticity” by incorporation “global and local,” “past and present,” the paper explains the extent to which actors’ referential behaviours shape the way “authenticity” is con-structed. By incorporating allogeneic consumption behaviours, following the fall of communism, Romanians in search of producing “authentic” self have built “conspicuous” houses as an identity brand. Such con-sumption behaviours reveal the extent to which “authenticity” interplays with the notion of heritage. By replacing peasant houses with “pride houses,” the significance attached to the “traditional” housing changes, especially in the rural world. For the researcher, “recycling meanings” of traditional housing in a globalizing world is an “authentic” manner of “inheriting the future” by obliterating the past nationalized through cul-tural policies as a “peasant past.”

In a different but also post-socialist context, Meglena Zlatkova anal-yses how the profound political and cultural modifications of the border


14

zone between Bulgaria and Turkey challenge nationalist conceptions of cultural heritage. Here, both people and heritage were and still are in mo-tion from one country to another, from one shared past to another, from one city to a new one. Just like ordinary people, local institutions of cul-tural policy experience new opportunities to reveal, learn about and re-cover their past and territories. The three points of this paper lay on the perception of heritage as a “social capital” following Bourdieu (family legacy, lands, ancestors, tourism development); on the ambiguous role of cultural heritage in the construction of cultural differences and of the common and mythic ancestors of ancient Thrace; on heritage-making as a collective tool to design frontiers where circulation is a daily rule, in-cluding tourism.

To what extent colonial legacy and tourism interrelate in the city of Melaka constitutes the heart of Ema Pires’ contribution. The interpreta-tions of colonial times create two circulation flows: circulation of histori-cal goods in the propaganda narratives; circulation of representations of the past between locals, descendants of colonial population, heritage professional and tourists. The past recalled by the descendants of the Portuguese colonial population is part of the cliché tourists and locals share, meanwhile each category, and maybe each individual following his own history, builds a unique image of what local cultural heritage should be. Confronting the representations of different class of actors (including heritage architects and ordinary people and school children), Ema Pires offers a suitable methodology on how to deal with the diversity and cir-culation between generations and classes of heritage perceptions and also a fine analysis of tourism as both preservation and changing principle of the past.

Taking a critical perspective from the outset, Eloy Martos Núñez and Alberto Martos García explore new modes of human expression related to the domain of tourism in local and transnational contexts. Consider-ing tourism as an engine for re-reading and re-writing tradition, the au-thors critically engage with the latest role of tourism in re-contextualizing tradition as a manner to adapt it to new ways of cultural intervention. By calling into question the interplay between tourism, development and heritage (in its tangible and intangible modes of expression) on various stages, their paper unveils tension in what regards the manners of medi-ating this three-folded relationship. From their perspective, touristifica-tion is a dialectic process, which involves power relationships amongst


15

various actors, in trying to encode or decode heritage, depending on pur-sued goals. Engaging also with a critical view on the role of media cul-ture in processing, hybridising or recombining folklore in order to forge and transmit “educated symbols,” the authors make a comparison with the field of cultural heritage. Indeed, tangible cultural heritage, i.e. mon-uments, buildings and artefacts and intangible cultural heritage, i.e. living tradition, memories and folklore, are packed as cultural products. How-ever, such cultural strategy means reshaping cultural heritage “into dif-ferent contents and containers,” as the author have stated. Drawing on rich material from several case-studies to support their arguments, the authors finally deal with the role of human agency in heritage transfor-mation and they introduce the idea of “brand narrations” as a means to produce the economic rejuvenation of a place.

Elena Serdukova reflects on the cultural outcomes of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took over. The erasure of the Russian bourgeois-democratic government and aris-tocratic power marked a watershed moment for the cultural and histori-cal development of Russia. Contrary to the expected outcomes of the 1917 Revolution, it did bring neither greater democratic freedoms nor development of capitalism. At the same time, Lenin’s radical position caused division among various Russian political groups and confusing time for Socialists. Unlike Núñez and García, Elena Serdukova prefers investigating the manner in which the new regime has contributed to erasing Russians’ cultural and historic memory. Basically, the change of the political regime, which ought to rejuvenate the country led to “a loss of personal and collective identity.” Instead, the new regime has created an official memory, which corresponds to the Marxism-Leninism ideolo-gy. The paper conceptualizes power relations through the investigation of the Russian intelligentsia émigrés’ practices of contestation of the new identity promoted by the hegemonic Russian politics and provides criti-cal insights into the perpetuation of a certain cultural heritage of Russia abroad.

The case-studies presented in this special issue indicate the polyphonic dimension of heritage-processes when approaches from bellow or dissi-dent manners of heritage-making come into play. This entails most often confronting the consensual accounts of the past, which generally offer a clean image of the nation and a comfortable social and political order. The inventory of the discourses on cultural heritage presented in this


16

volume indicates remaking, reinterpretations and new shapes of histori-cal affordances, sometimes these mechanisms being located at the inter-face between power, negotiation and conflict.

Acknowledgement The authors would like to gratefully thank Irina Ionescu who assisted with the proof-reading of this paper. References Ashley, Susan. “State Authority and the Public Sphere.” Museum and society 3.1

(2005): 5 17. Bendix, Regina, Aditya Eggert, and Arnika Peselmann (Eds.). Heritage Regime and the

State. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, 2013. Bendix, Regina. “Heritage between economy and politics. An assessment from the

perspective of cultural anthropology”. Intangible heritage. Eds. Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa. London: Routledge, 2009. 253–269.

Bondaz, Julien, Florence Graezer-Bideau, Cyril Isnart, and Anaïs Leblon (Eds.). “Relocaliser les discours du patrimoine’.” Les vocabulaires locaux du patrimoine. Tra-ductions, négociations et transformations. Eds. Julien Bondaz, Florence Graezer-Bideau, Cyril Isnart, and Anaïs Leblon. Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2014. 9 31.

Bondaz, Julien, Cyril Isnart, and Anaïs Leblon. “Au-delà du consensus patrimonial. Résistances et usages contestataires du patrimoine.” Civilisations 61.1 (2012): 9 21.

Catrina, Sonia. Se montrer “maramure ean(c )”. Les mises en scène de l’identité paysanne. Ia i: Institutul European, 2014.

Catrina, Sonia. “Rationalité et ancrage social: une étude de cas des ‘paysans’ –muséographes du Maramure .” Nouvelles approches de la rationalité. Défis contemporains des sciences humaines et sociales. Eds. Ioan Pânzaru and Dana Popescu-Jourdy. Presses Universitaires de Lyon and Maison d’Edition de l’Université de Bucarest, 2014. 273 288.

Clark, David. “Governance, Alliance and Resistance. Jewish Museums in Italy.” Con-tested Mediterranean Spaces. Eds. Maria Koussis, Tom Selwyn, and David Clark. London: Berghan Books. 240-259.

Fourcade, Marie-Blanche, and Caroline Legrand (Eds.). Patrimoine des migrations et mi-grations des patrimoines. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval-Institut du patri-moine culturel, 2008.

Halbwachs, Maurice. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952.

Harrison, Rodney. Heritage: Critical Approaches. Milton Park: Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2013.

Graburn, Nelson and Maria Gravari-Barbas. “Imagined Landscapes of Tour-ism.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 9.3 (2011): 159 166.

Harvey, David C. “Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents: temporality, meaning and


17

the scope of heritage studies.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 7.4 (2001): 319 338.

Heinich, Nathalie. “The Making of Cultural Heritage.” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 40–41 (2010-2011): 119–128.

Hertz, Ellen, and Susanne Chappaz-Wirthner. “Introduction: le ‘patrimoine’ a-t-il fait son temps?” Ethnographies des pratiques patrimoniales temporalités, territoires, communautés, 24 (2012): 1-13.

Herzfeld, Michael. A Place in History: Monumental and Social Time in a Cretan Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Isnart, Cyril. “The Mayor, the Chapel and the Ancestors. Clientelism, Emotion and Heritagisation in Southern France.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 18.5 (2012): 479 494.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums and Heritage, Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Theorizing Heritage.” Ethnomusicology 39.3(1995): 367 380.

Lowenthal David. The past is a foreign country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Moore, Shaunna and Susan Pell. “Autonomous Archives.” International Journal of Her-itage Studies 16.4 (2010): 55 268.

Nora, Pierre. Ed. Les lieux de mémoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. Noyes, Dorothy. Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Noyes, Dorothy. “On Sociocultural Categories.” Indian Folklife 19 (2005): 3 7. Pomian, Krzysztof. “Musée, nation, musée national.” Le débat 65 (1991): 167 175. Poulot, Dominique. Musée, Nation, Patrimoine (1789-1815). Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Poulot, Dominique. Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle. Du monu-

ment aux valeurs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006. Rautenberg, Michel. La rupture patrimoniale. Grenoble: A la croisée, 2003. Smith, Laurajane. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge, 2006. Tornatore, Jean-Louis. “Words for Expressing What We Care About. The Continui-

ty and the Exteriority of the Heritage Experience.” Les vocabulaires locaux du patri-moine. Traductions, négociations et transformations. Eds. Julien Bondaz, Florence Graezer-Bideau, Cyril Isnart, and Anaïs Leblon. Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2014. 31 54.

Tunbridge, J. E. and Gregory John Ashworth (Eds.). Dissonant Heritage: The Manage-ment of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 1996.

Isnart Cyril and Catrina Sonia 2014. Introduction: Mapping the Moving Dimensions of Heritage,...

Documents

Transcript of Isnart Cyril and Catrina Sonia 2014. Introduction: Mapping the Moving Dimensions of Heritage,...