Essence in excess: heritage and the problem of potentiality (original) (raw)
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An Introduction to Heritage in Action
Academics did not create heritage, but they disciplined it, so to speak, in the late 20 th century. Heritage was already happening in the context of multiculturalism and globalization as " people all over the world … turned to ethnic and cultural identity as a means of mobilizing themselves for the defense of their social and political-economic interests " (Turner, 1993, p. 423). It was also happening via the mechanisms of UNESCO's World Heritage List, which were beginning to operate as early as 1978, and as mass tourism opened up new horizons for that industry. Indeed, cultural heritage was – and is – on the move: heritage is in action. One clear demonstration of this is the " overproduction " of heritage. Whether it is the expansion of the World Heritage List (1,031 inscriptions as of 2015 with no end in sight/sites, if we may be permitted the pun), the proliferation of museums, individual and community heritagizing actions, business sector appropriations of heritage discourse and imagery, the new European Heritage Label, or heritage-justified internal and international ethnic strife—it seems that everything and anything is being declared, contested and/or performed as heritage. Moreover, heritage now travels with a mobile population – temporary, permanent and along a scale between those extremes – and it (re)creates and reconfigures itself in its destinations. Heritage is produced and mobilized by individuals and communities in any number of actions, including remembering, forgetting, generating, adapting and performing. Heritage shapes and reshapes people's sense of place, sense of belonging and cultural identities locally and nationally. Clearly, then, heritage does " work " (Smith, 2006). And as work, cultural heritage is a tool that is deployed broadly in society today. It is at work in indigenous and vernacular communities, in urban development and regeneration schemes, in expressions of community, in acts of memorialization and counteracts of forgetting, in museums and other spaces of representation, in tourism, in the offices of those making public policy and, all too frequently, in conflicts over identity and the goals of those politics of identification. Thus, heritage is not simply an inert " something " to be looked at, passively experienced or a point of entertainment; rather, it is always bringing the past into the present through historical contingency and strategic appropriations, deployments, redeployments, and the creation of connections and reconnections. It implicates how memory is produced, framed, articulated and inscribed upon spaces in a locale, across regions, nationally and, ultimately, transnationally. It enables us to critically engage with contemporary social and political issues of grand import while also being a familiar prop drawn upon to make sense of more mundane processes of negotiating self, place, home and community.
Cultural Heritages: Process, Power, Commodification
Cultural Heritages as Reflexive Traditions, 2007
This book explores the concept of heritage from the perspective of anthropologists working in different regions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. 1 Although all the contributors are located in the discipline of anthropology, this does not necessarily imply that all have the same conceptual understanding of the issues involved. Several essays explore the notion of heritage (e.g. Aspraki, Costa, Kockel and Magowan) and it is very clear, that there are shades of difference in meaning. This underlines the need for a book such as this to explore anthropological definitions of and contributions to heritage on an international scale. In any case, one could hardly assume that a single English-language word could encapsulate all concepts and understandings of the term 'heritage', and there are probably different nuances in terminology in diverse languages. The Polish word for heritage is dziedzictwo, which derives from the verb dziedziczyc (to inherit) and the noun dziedzic (heir), and refers to 'what has been inherited'. Individual buildings, monuments, and so on are not 'heritages'. Instead they are items of heritage, and constitute specific elements of a broad collective inheritance. 2 The Swedish word arv also implies something that is passed on; an inheritance from which one cannot distance oneself or escape from. This is a passive rather than an active form of inheritance. It is received rather than earned. 3 The Spanish word patrimonio corresponds to the English word 'heritage', but it is also used in ways that would not apply in the British context and can refer to individual wealth or to the total capital of a company. Patrimonio nacional, for example, is an economic term for the wealth of a country, the sum of its assets, but it can also refer in a cultural sense to the heritage of a nation. It is for this reason, perhaps, U. Kockel et al. (eds.), Cultural Heritages as Reflexive Traditions
Introduction: Heritage-Outside-In
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2016
Heritage' is one social imaginary used by people to define identity in relation to ideas about the past. But global flows of people, ideas, imaginations and technologies (Appadurai 1996; Urry 2007) are challenging established group/community/national identities and the dominating systems and discourses of power that constitute heritage. This special issue offers a range of insights about those challenges to the nature and importance of heritage and identities from the perspectives of those 'outside' the authorised realm of heritage discourse (Smith 2006). Important to us are the power relations that constitute the shifting, contested and puzzling assumptions of difference used to define 'inside' and 'outside' positionality (Hall 1999; Littler 2005). We see 'heritage-making' as a process of cultural production in relation to the past by which people make sense of their world and their place within it, as well as strategically assert their voices in the public sphere. Heritage is interpreted not as an intrinsic quality possessed by objects, buildings or places or even intangible practices, but a signification or valuation of the past undertaken by all humans to give meaning to their lives. Heritage as 'making' is a performative act; an active and affective expression of individual and community senses of self (Robertson 2012). Performative heritage seen as an act of voice infers a more political expressing of opinion, being heard, and registering that opinion in a way that is recognised and valued in democratised world-making. Heritage expression as 'world-making' draws on Arendt (1958) who passionately argued for a public realm with the power to gather strangers together, mobilising both semblance and difference in order to confront the complexities and uncertainties of human life in diverse communities (Simon and Ashley 2010). In this process, peoples will seek to retain the ability to make worlds (choose, express and change their rooted identities) in ways that they control socially, economically and politically. By making heritage, 'outside' or minority individuals and groups represent their own cultural difference, but also articulate their relationship to the collective polity in their home/place/nation (Shryock 2004). Much international academic research about heritage and marginalised or minority peoples situates such peoples as 'beneficiaries' of mainstream institutional social inclusion activities (Lynch and Alberti 2010). This special issue takes the 'outsider' perspective, inspecting independent heritage-making actions and projects driven by ethnic, racial and other (sub)cultural groups and individuals. The research topics presented here aim to understand heritage-making activities as phenomena within globalisation and de-colonialisation, bound up in the negotiation of identities and subjectivities by marginalised or migratory peoples, thus shaped by the social, cultural and political ecologies of signification on the ground. The 'outside-in' approach is an essential component of critical heritage studies, which advocates a theoretically and politically informed analysis of the processes in society that produce and consume the past, often from a bottom up perspective (Smith 2012; Winter 2013; Witcomb and Buckley 2013). While heritage scholars have long included critical perspectives (e.g. Hewison 1987; Lowenthal 1996), critical heritage theorists foreground power relations and invite 'the active participation of people and communities who to date have been marginalised in the creation and management of "heritage"' (Smith 2012, 534). This special issue looks at those multifaceted power relations that ground in transcontinental
Berghahn Books, 2018
How long should we resist smiling smugly, replacing at once the agency of the Virgin by the 'obvious' delusion of an actor 'finding pretext' in a religious icon to 'hide' one's own decision? Critical sociologists will answer: 'Just as far as to be polite, because it's bad manners to sneer in the presence of the informant'. (2005: 48) Alternatively, Latour suggests taking interlocutors-their theories, their metaphysics, their ontologies-seriously: following their modes of understanding 'no matter what metaphysical imbroglios they lead us into' (Latour 2005: 48). In our own way, we have tried to take this critique to heart. Incontestable research findings that the tradition is 'invented', the community 'imagined' or the identity 'performed' are nothing more (and nothing less) than the outcome of a particular, constructivist mode of analysis. Such outcomes are not necessarily untrue, and they may even be very close to what our interlocutors tell us (as clearly, they too may question, doubt and 'deconstruct' what is taken for granted in their lifeworlds). But there are many ways of knowing traditions, communities and identities, and consequently many different tales to tell about them. The tales that we want to present in this volume seek to 'think away' from the idea that humanmade worlds are merely fabricated, and ponder the question how traditions, communities and identities come to be experienced as really real. The fact that a new generation of Pataxó reintroduced feathers and grass skirts to their wardrobes, and opted for the woods again, should not be addressed with simple dualisms of real and fake, which are too crude to govern a sophisticated analysis. The fact that many Pataxó understood that there is something to be gained by adopting that ethnic label does not reduce them The 'Heritage Buzz': Entering the Field of Heritage Studies The 'sense of heritage', says David C. Harvey, is of all times. In his intriguing article, which documents how 'the desire to highlight the presence of the past in the present' (2001: 319) was manifested in Medieval Europe, he reminds us that heritage formations are no novelty. Nonetheless, in many places around the globe, researchers have observed a marked acceleration of heritage production: a veritable run on the 'heritage' label, involving evernew actors, and an ever-expanding network of agencies and institutions.
Intangible' and 'tangible' heritage
2006
my lovely little roof-terrace nearby-kindly offered by 'Um Zaheer' who like 'my' mosque welcomed me with ever-growing gentleness the many times and altogether about eleven months I stayed-in Damascus Syria. Section Four: Towards an integrated approach 1 New typologies or beyond typologies 2 Topology in lieu of typology 2.1 Logos and topos 2.2 Topology-construction of a concept 2.3 Topology-opportunities and challenges Methodology of topological studies 3.1 Archaeology to social psychology-a round trip 3.2 Phenomenology and semiology 3.3 The paradox of documentation 3.4 Located or mapped? 3.5 Layered management for layered heritage Section Five: Topology researched-the Umayyad Mosque 1 The Umayyad Mosque-a conventional heritage introduction 2 A topological heritage analysis 2.1 Faith and duty-performance of prayers 2.2 Be blessed-visiting the prophets 2.3 Imam al-Hussayn-mourning and aspiration 2.4 Saint John's Cathedral-regretfully 2.5 Freedom-the largest playground 2.6 The Umayyad Mosque Museum 2.7 Tranquillity-keep and restore calm 2.8 Piazza-sitting, chatting, flirting 2.9 Smoking room-unveiled 2.10 Grab your food first-ramadan charity 2.11 Monumental-representation of power 2.12 The Centre-longing for home 2.13 Architectural prototype-curricula must 3 Heritage Umayyad Mosque-revisited 3.1 The case in UNESCO typologies 3.2 Heritage-emergence and obtrusion 3.3 Just another statement of significance? Conclusions: A plea for typological flexibility Epilogue: Preserving heritage as poetry References Appendix Prologue: thesis and methodology "What is created cannot itself come into being without those who preserve it" (Heidegger, 1971b, p. 66) states the German philosopher Martin Heidegger-whose poetic words I used to introduce into this work-in his essay on the origin of the work of art. His subsequent definition of the meaning of preservation has strongly inspired me in the process of writing. It shall therefore-though as yet unexplainedprecede my elaborations and will be taken up and into my considerations again later. Heidegger argues that: "Preserving the work means: standing-within the openness of being that happens in the work. This 'standing-within' of preservation, however, is a knowing." (Heidegger, 1971b, p. 67)
Seductions and disenchantments in the making of heritage // 2010 // Conference Proceedings
David Picard and Carina Amaral (eds) Proceedings of the TOCOCU 1st Biannual Conference, 2010
First paragraphs in lieu of an abstract: Tourist sites are not immediately present in social experience. They are the outcome of complex processes that in many cases involve the production of heritage. Recent developments in the study of heritage have outlined the existence of diverse practices and discourses that circulate within and across the territories subject to the tourist gaze. Our aim is to discuss the world of heritage, and its making, through several case studies and from different points of view. Whereas on the one hand we understand the making of heritage as an experience in which diverse power structures and social agencies converge, we also realize its matter leaves plenty of room for divergence. Our purpose is to explore the way in which seduction and disenchantment are involved in the implementation of heritage policies that shape and emerge within the process, as well as the kind of support and dissent the politics of heritage arouses.
WHAT TO CONSERVE? Heritage, Memory, and Management of Meanings
2015
This Paper explores and criticizes different theories and perceptions concerning ‘cultural heritage’ to explore the definitions of ‘heritage’ throughout history, and questions how the conflicts in considering and identifying ‘heritage’ might have affected the approaches to its conservation. In such process, the paper investigates the relation between ‘place’ and ‘memory’ and how place has been always the medium through which history was written, resulting in two inseparable faces, tangible and the intangible, forming the two-faced coin of ‘cultural heritage’. This research assists understanding the complex construct of heritage places; stressing the growing awareness of intangible heritage’s importance, which represents a remarkable turn in heritage conservation realm in the twenty-first century, and emphasizing the notion of heritage as a coefficient of society, which is understood through experience, learnt through performance, and represented through ‘activities’ formed in the pr...
Making Sense of the Present: heritage is political – it belongs to us
I am interested in the power of things and ideas to bring people together and develop our thinking about contemporary issues. As an archaeologist, landscape and social historian I find that people engage with the human past to make sense of the present, and therefore the quality of that engagement is significant. Evidence suggests that 'heritage' can be an important tool for social empowerment, and in my practice I work with a range of people and organisations to encourage wider participation, enabling alternative perspectives, the creation of new and different knowledge, and multiple narratives. In this paper I offer a critique of i) the narrow interpretations often provided by presenters of 'Heritage' as part of our UK and European tourism/visitor agenda, and ii) how much of it, including our archaeology, historic landscapes and museum collections, can be difficult to engage with in meaningful ways – partly because of the interpretations offered, partly because of perceived academic/professional barriers and partly because they may literally be difficult to access. I provide a few examples of public engagement which attempt to get round these obstacles and illustrate the value of working in partnership with museums, writers, artists, musicians, film-makers and scientists, to enable community groups to explore aspects of our past to help find our present voices.