Heritage cosmopolitics: Archaeology, Indigeneity, and Rights (original) (raw)
Related papers
Chacmool at 50: The Past, Present, and Future of Archaeology, edited by K. Pennanen and S. Goosney, pp. 84-101. Chacmool Archaeology Association, University of Calgary. Chacmool, 2019
In this paper I take a pragmatic approach to discussing indigenous heritage, which constitutes the focus of most of the archaeology we do in North America. If descendant groups are denied direct and meaningful ways of engaging in decision making concerning their heritage, then heritage management policies are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. My position is based on three points: 1) that access to and control over ones own heritage is a basic human right essential to their survival; 2) that Indigenous peoples in settler countries have historically been separated from their heritage, experienced little benefit from heritage-related research and suffered cultural and spiritual harms and economic loss as a result; and 3) that community-based heritage initiatives are capable of challenging colonial structures in the research process without compromising the integrity of archaeology. My goal here is to discuss the need for a theoretically, ethically and politically viable approach to heritage research with, for and by descendant communities.
Public Archaeology, 2014
To ask how prioritizing the commodifiable aspects of heritage transforms the relationships that define it, this paper begins by tracing the historical development of mercantile perspectives on archaeological objects, sites, and landscapes in the central Andes. From colonial looting and the mining of treasure to the illustrated emphasis on testimonial value which gave rise to modern national archaeologies in the early twentieth century, contingent encounters define processes of mercantilization, including current drives to deploy archaeology to produce commodities for the tourism industry. After scrutinizing the roles of heritage legislation, local government, entrepreneurs, local communities, and archaeologists in this process, the differing intentions, mechanisms, and effects of commoditization are highlighted. The production of essentialized identities and the invisibilization of meaningful relations between people about things and places are exclusions emanating from the marriage of archaeology and development. These are showcased in the budding cultural tourism context of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, as an attempt to chart the ethical minefield of emergent hybrid indigeneity.
Latinoamerica. Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos , 2019
The purpose of this article is to analyze the condition of indigenous peoples' rights in the context of the protection, safeguard and management of their cultural heritage, especially those elements which have been recognized as of "outstanding universal values" and inscribed on the unesco World Heritage List. As the territory of reference, I chose the Latin American area. I point out the negative aspects of the political appropriation of the cultural heritage and the implications of its designation as a World Heritage for indigenous peoples. Referring in particular to the international documents and analyzing the content of the recommendations and reports adopted in recent years by the un-system, I also try to identify the positive social initiatives and political practices.
Indigenous Heritage and Ontological Conflicts in the Southcentral Andes
Future Anterior, 2022
Taking inspiration from the epistemological potential of the Aymara concept of taypi this contribution aims to show the persistence of Indigenous peoples' self-determination and community governance in contemporary heritage politics. A multisited archaeological ethnography across Tiwanaku (Bolivia) and the Calchaquí valleys (Tucumán, Argentina) brings to light the long memories of anti-colonial resistance in the southcentral Andes and visualizes heritage-making practices in their ecological dimension, bridging multiple temporalities and territorial relatedness. The resulting picture figures a deep-seated tension between regulatory policies that adjust indigenous heritage to universal classifications and values embedded in the modern nation-state imaginaries, and emancipatory politics in which heritage claims are entangled with the social reproduction of community life and with the reparation of historical injustices. This twofold political dimension materializes in the legal artefact of the free, prior, informed consultation (FPIC), whose long memory of ambiguity is traced down to the early day of colonization. The article argues that consent-seeking mechanisms create an intermediate space where universal and place-based worldmaking designs converge. Locating these grey areas in time and space is crucial for addressing intercultural histories and future-oriented practices of heritage rights.
Human Rights and Heritage Ethics
2010. In Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 4, pp. 839-860 This paper discusses the efficacy of applying a framework of universal human rights to resolve heritage conflicts. It considers the pitfalls and potentials in particular heritage settings for both archaeologists and the constituencies we seek to represent. A distinction is made throughout the paper between invoking universal human rights, as opposed to other rights or claims more broadly. Specifically, I ask what does the mantle of universal human rights bring to heritage? What additional work might it perform, and who wins and loses when archaeologists elevate cultural heritage to this arena of urgency? If archaeologists want to pursue this route, what steps might they take to be conversant with human rights and, more importantly, effective in practically implementing that knowledge? I then describe the situation in post-apartheid South Africa—a nation that has arguably crafted the world’s most liberal constitution, yet in reality faces numerous challenges to instrumentalizing human rights. In terms of South African heritage rights, the archaeological site of Thulamela is offered as an example of conflict resolution at the local level by briefly examining the role of archaeologists and several connected communities each vying for access and ownership of the site. Following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum I suggest that heritage practitioners might be more effective and ethically responsible by being attendant to pragmatic approaches that enhance human capabilities and human flourishing.
International Journal of Cultural Property, 2008
Is there a universal right to the free expression and preservation of cultural heritage, and if so, where is that right articulated and can it be protected? How is the notion of "heritage" used variously to unite and divide communities? Who defines cultural heritage and who should control stewardship and the benefits of cultural heritage? These are the important questions that Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild Ruggles pose on the back cover of Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. A volume both broad and rich, it addresses the political aspect of heritage preservation and management as it relates to human rights. This book is the outcome of a workshop organized in 2006 by the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices (CHAMP) held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The workshop brought together a group of contributors from a range of fields: archaeology, anthropology, history, culture studies, landscape architecture, and geography. Their objective was to examine and interrogate heritage as it relates to cultural identity. Their published essays present a cross-section of the academic discussions about cultural heritage and human rights. Cultural Heritage and Human Rights has three strengths. First, the editors make the argument that "human rights and cultural heritage are not self contained," and the chapters insightfully demonstrate how "they may overlap and in doing so may conflict with each other" (p. 6). Second, they have included case studies that show the ambivalence of heritage and the challenges involved in its preservation and production. Third, the volume reveals that much substantive fieldwork on cultural heritage and human rights is undertaken by those critical of conservation discourse and international management practices. In this way the book provides a solid overview of the critical dimensions of cultural preservation for scholars, policymakers, students, and heritage workers. If, as Silverman and Ruggles argue in their introduction, "cultural heritage does not figure prominently in the extensive literature on human rights" (p. 41), the chapters by William Logan, James Wescoat, Jr., and Christopher Silver are an important corrective. They demonstrate how conservation is a problematic force that undermines as well as supports the maintenance and extension of human rights.
Mobilizing Heritage: Anthropological Practice and Transnational Prospects
2018
Mapping out emerging areas for global cultural heritage, this book provides an anthropological perspective on the growing field of heritage studies. Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels adopts a dual focus—looking back on the anthropological foundations for cultural heritage research while looking forward to areas of practice that reach beyond national borders: economic development, climate action, democratic practice, heritage rights, and global justice. Taken together, these growth areas characterize transnational heritage activity and represent channels for working around, negotiating, and pushing back against the traditional authority of nation-states and intergovernmental treaty–based organizations such as UNESCO. Lafrenz Samuels argues that transnational heritage signals important shifts for heritage practice, from a paradigm of preservation to a paradigm of development. Responding to this expanding developmental sensibility, she positions cultural heritage as a persuasive tool for transformative action, capable of mobilizing and shaping social change. Using examples drawn from her research and fieldwork in North Africa, the Arctic, and the United States, she shows how anthropological approaches foster and support the persuasive power of heritage in the transnational sphere.
National sentiments have historically overwhelmed global ones in the modern era. Archaeology was born in the service of the nation-state, as a technical means for engaging with the past within a specific calculus of territory, sovereignty, and nationhood. Significant shifts are currently underway, however, towards transnational modes and mechanisms of governance that have arisen in the wake of international dysfunction and neoliberal reforms. Within this emerging field of action it is development, rather than conservation, that shapes the diverse work of archaeological practice in the world. Transnational sociopolitical contexts for archaeological practice most visibly gained traction with multilateral development banks’ turn to heritage development in the 1990s, built around the tenets of participation, capacity-building, and sustainability. From these roots a second generation of concerns has emerged—transnational communities, heritage rights, and global climate change—for archaeological practice attuned to a “politics of engagement” (Mullins 2011) in a transnational key.
Unpacking Neoliberal Archaeological Control of Ancient Indigenous Heritage
Archaeologies, 2017
chaeologists often discuss the First People of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas) and their descendants, as Immigrants from Asia or Solutreans from France. In this paper, I discuss how archaeologists as handmaidens of the late modern state control the past in the present. This control keeps Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere as recent migrants on a global history time scale. Arguing against recent initial migration time frames to the Western Hemisphere, I discuss the Indigenous Palaeolithic of the Americas; and what an acknowledgment of the ancient past may bring to contemporary Indigenous communities.
American Anthropologist, 2024
More than ever, heritage narratives, policies, and objects are being questioned because of the colonial legacies that still permeate public spaces (e.g., Knudsen et al., 2022). From the eruption of protests and claims to heritage objects, places, and monuments in former colonial powers, to the emergence of Indigenous peoples' heritage curatorship of land, and resources activism, new efforts are challenging racialized social orders and persistent exclusionary regimes. Protests echo long-running questions about social structure, voice, and ability to shape lives and the future, linking heritage to broader questions of rights, resources, and redistribution. Both academic scholarship and grassroots politics prompt us to interrogate the entrenched politics of representation, socio-material interactions, and the unfinished business of decolonizing heritage institutions and practices. This conversation started within the framework of a networking seed grant project promoted by the University of Geneva and the University of Exeter. 1 The project aimed to broaden the conversation on the intersections of cultural heritage, identity, and landscape sustainability by bringing together scholars addressing different configurations of heritage regimes, discourses, and practices from various regions of the world.