Books by Valdimar Hafstein
Cambridge University Press, 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/patrimonialities/CC234296DD9DB19C2C902CE31CDA0C4A , 2020
With empirical touchstones from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, the authors... more With empirical touchstones from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, the authors argue that heritage and property represent different approaches to subject formation, produce distinct bodies of expertise, and belong to different rationalities of government in a global patrimonial field: that cultural property is a technology of sovereignty, part of the order of the modern liberal state, but cultural heritage is a technology of reformation that cultivates responsible subjects and entangles them in networks of expertise and management. While particular case trajectories may shift back and forth from rights-based claims and resolutions under the sign of cultural property to ethical claims and solutions under the sign of cultural heritage, the authors contend that there is significant analytical purchase to be gained from their distinction. Using a critical, comparative approach, they make the case for a historically grounded and theoretically informed understanding of the difference between the two terms.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/patrimonialities/CC234296DD9DB19C2C902CE31CDA0C4A
Making Intangible Heritage: El Condor Pasa and Other Stories from UNESCO , 2018
In Making Intangible Heritage, Valdimar Tr. Hafstein—folklorist and official delegate to UNESCO—t... more In Making Intangible Heritage, Valdimar Tr. Hafstein—folklorist and official delegate to UNESCO—tells the story of UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Convention. In the ethnographic tradition, Hafstein peers underneath the official account, revealing the context important for understanding UNESCO as an organization, the concept of intangible heritage, and the global impact of both. Looking beyond official narratives of compromise and solidarity, this book invites readers to witness the diplomatic jostling behind the curtains, the making and breaking of alliances, and the confrontation and resistance, all of which marked the path towards agreement and shaped the convention and the concept.
Various stories circulate within UNESCO about the origins of intangible heritage. Bringing the sensibilities of a folklorist to these narratives, Hafstein explores how they help imagine coherence, conjure up contrast, and provide charters for action in the United Nations and on the ground. Examining the international organization of UNESCO through an ethnographic lens, Hafstein demonstrates how concepts that are central to the discipline of folklore gain force and traction outside of the academic field and go to work in the world, ultimately shaping people’s understanding of their own practices and the practices themselves. From the cultural space of the Jemaa el-Fna marketplace in Marrakech to the Ise Shrine in Japan, Making Intangible Heritage considers both the positive and the troubling outcomes of safeguarding intangible heritage, the lists it brings into being, the festivals it animates, the communities it summons into existence, and the way it orchestrates difference in modern societies.
Titilsíða, efnisyfirlit, fyrsti kafli bókarinnar og ágrip á ensku
(Title page, table of contents,... more Titilsíða, efnisyfirlit, fyrsti kafli bókarinnar og ágrip á ensku
(Title page, table of contents, first chapter, and abstracts in English)
Films by Valdimar Hafstein
Freely available in Open Access at: flightofthecondorfilm.com, 2018
30-minute documentary film by Valdimar Tr. Hafstein and Áslaug Einarsdóttir.
Subtitled in Spani... more 30-minute documentary film by Valdimar Tr. Hafstein and Áslaug Einarsdóttir.
Subtitled in Spanish, French, Italian, English, Icelandic and Mandarin Chinese
Keywords: music, folklore, politics, international relations, intangible heritage, copyright, anthropology
The Flight of the Condor traces the global circulation of the melody “El Condor Pasa”: from the Andes mountains to global metropoles; from Lima to Paris to New York, and back; from panpipes to piano and from symphony orchestras to the disco; from indigenous to popular music; and from world music back to national heritage. Some of the protagonists are: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Daniel Alomía Robles, Alan Lomax, Los Incas, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Company, the Victor Talking Machine Corporation, the Falangist Socialist Party of Bolivia, Chuck Berry, NASA, WIPO and UNESCO.
The story that the film tells shows how individual personalities and states can shape texts that become the foundation of global narratives; and how propositions made for a particular local reason become global instruments with entirely different effects in other corners of the world. Unpacking the global/local dialectic, the film is a case study in paradox; it analyzes the prehistory of international heritage/copyright norms, the way that prehistory travels in oral and written circulation, and the enduring problems it points to in the implementation of these norms.
Valdimar Hafstein (University of Iceland), SIEF's President, recounts an awkward ethnological mom... more Valdimar Hafstein (University of Iceland), SIEF's President, recounts an awkward ethnological moment while 'going native' as the chairman of the National Commission of Iceland at UNESCO's General Conference in 2011.
Ethnology in three and a half minutes: the what, the why, the when, and the how. SIEF presents a ... more Ethnology in three and a half minutes: the what, the why, the when, and the how. SIEF presents a short film on European Ethnology. For more information visit siefhome.org/videos.shtml
Papers by Valdimar Hafstein
Journal of American Folklore, 2022
In recent years, the Icelandic dairy product skyr has been transformed from an everyday staple to... more In recent years, the Icelandic dairy product skyr has been transformed from an everyday staple to a national food heritage. Skyr is high in protein and low in fat, and its nutritional value accounts for its international success. However, the domestic and international marketing of skyr glide effortlessly from medieval literature to modern healthy living in promoting skyr as a unique, wholesome, and authentic product: heritage food and Iceland's “secret to healthy living.” In this article, we explore how skyr has been recontextualized as heritage through the cultural staging of skyr-making and through branding efforts. It was not until skyr had become a standardized export commodity that people began to fear that action was needed to protect the traditional way of skyr-making. Picking up on the trend of “heritagization,” pioneered by Slow Food (which added skyr to its “Ark of Taste”) and by small farmers catering to tourists, industrial skyr producers have come around to narrating the cultural history of skyr, employing heritage branding to carve out a unique place within the global dairy-scape. We untangle the messy relationships between the local and the global in such heritage efforts by examining how global trends and markets influence people at local levels, impacting the way they think about and act on their own cultural forms, and how the local level, in turn, impacts global flows under the sign of heritage.
Arkiv For Nordisk Filologi, 2003
What troubles the AEsir? What troubles the Elves? Giant Realm is all aroar. The AEsir are in coun... more What troubles the AEsir? What troubles the Elves? Giant Realm is all aroar. The AEsir are in council. Dwarfs groan at the granite doors, well knowing their immuring rock. D o you still seek to know? And what? (Dronke íg g y^o-ii) 1 Scholarship on the mother of all Eddie poems, Völuspá, rich and wideranging though it is, has overlooked a little reference in the latter half of the poem, which I believe is significant for its elucidation. The reference is in the stanza cited above and invokes a whole field of signification through its description of groaning dwarfs at granite doors-or so I will argue in this paper. Through textual criticism and folkloristic analysis, I hope to contribute a footnote to the interpretation of Völuspá and its eschatological narrative. But first, a little philology: the stanza occupies a different place in the order of the poem in its three main manuscripts. In the Codex Regius manuscript (R), it comes after the onslaught of Kióll from the east and Loki's leading the sons of Múspell across the sea, both en route to that ultimate battle, Ragnarök. It is followed by the attack of the most sinis ter of giants, Surtr, who comes raging from the south, and we are told that at the same time, "Griótbiorg gnata, /en gifr rata. / Troða halir helveg, / en himinn klofnar" (Stone peaks clash, / and troll wives take to Hvat er með ásom? Hvat er með álfom? Gnýr allr iotunheimr. AEsir ro á þingi. Stynia dvergar fyr steindurom, veggbergs visir. Vitoð ér enn, eða hvat?
Ethnologia Europaea
The first great collector in Scandinavia and a phenomenal figure in North European intellectual his... more The first great collector in Scandinavia and a phenomenal figure in North European intellectual history, Ole Worm (1588-1654) has been claimed as a local founding father for several modern disciplines, including archeology, museology, philology, ethnology, and folklore. A professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen, he set up a famous museum that came to form the basis for Denmark's National Museum, he engineered pioneering ethnological questionnaire surveys of the Danish kingdom, he wrote a ...
Journal of American Folklore, 2018
Looking at examples of cultural practices listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage, this article a... more Looking at examples of cultural practices listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage, this article appropriates the term “folklorization” from authenticity discourses and argues that the current heritagization of social practices is an aspect of the infusion of folkloristic/ethnological knowledge, perspectives, and concepts into the public sphere as part of modernity’s reflexivity. Aptly named “folklorization,” this infusion marks the success of the field in what has always been its ultimate objective: to change the way people look at their own culture, the way they define it, and the way they practice it.
Routledge Companion to Cultural Property (chapter 2), 2017
The chapter examines the relationship between cultural property and cultural heritage with refere... more The chapter examines the relationship between cultural property and cultural heritage with reference to case studies from Greece, Morocco, USA and Canada, Denmark, Iceland and Greenland. Moving from a legal to an historical definition, we argue that the two represent fundamentally different approaches to subject formation, produce distinct bodies of expertise, and belong to different rationalities of government in the patrimonial field. Protecting cultural property, we propose, is a technology of sovereignty and forms part of the order of the modern liberal state. Conversely, we contend that safeguarding cultural heritage is a technology of reformation, cultivating responsible subjects and entangling them in networks of expertise and management.
"It is less important, we found, to debate what a discipline is than to understand what is in it,... more "It is less important, we found, to debate what a discipline is than to understand what is in it, but ultimately what matters most is what comes out of it."
Introduction to a special issue of Cultural Analysis, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF)
Narrative Culture 1(1), 2014
Beginning with nineteenth-century allegations that Hans Christian Andersen lifted the tale of “Lu... more Beginning with nineteenth-century allegations that Hans Christian Andersen lifted the tale of “Lucky Hans” from the Grimm brothers and that the Grimms lifted “The Princess on the Pea” from Andersen, this essay proposes a genealogy of contemporary representations of creative agency, given shape through the regime of authorship and force of law through the regime of copyright. Juxtaposing the author with the folk as two modern figures of creative agency with contrary attributes, the essay argues for their mutual dependence, where the latter is a residual category created through the former’s definition, and therefore its constitutive outside. In this, folklore compares to the public domain, brought into being by the invention of copyright, as its constitutive outside. In fact, folklore and the public domain have been related from the outset—interdependent, coeval, and to a considerable degree coextensive. Studying paradoxes the convergence of copyright and folklore pose, the essay seeks ultimately to move beyond them by conceiving in alternative terms of creative agency. The collector-editor, it suggests, is a more helpful figure for creative agency than either that of the author or the folk, better suited to understanding creativity and the circulation of culture.
Cultural Heritage in Transit: Intangible Rights as Human Rights, ed. Deborah Kapchan, 2014
If tangible heritage is territory in some sense, then by the same token it stands to reason that ... more If tangible heritage is territory in some sense, then by the same token it stands to reason that intangible heritage is community. The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage represents a subtle innovation in governmental rationality, disciplining populations through a conversion of their customs, practices, and expressions into heritage (the threatened nature of which makes it morally imperative to intervene). Ultimately, this shift makes community itself subject to conservation in the face of its purportedly steady decline in the modern world. Community is thus the most fundamental intangible heritage that UNESCO’s new convention sets out to safeguard. In this sense, it is an important objective of the convention to build communities with which their members identify, even if many states are careful to circumscribe the terms of such empowerment.
The communalization of heritage and cultural policy helps to form and to reform population groups and thereby to orchestrate differences within the state. In other words, it is a strategy for coping with difference. From this perspective, intangible heritage emerges as an instrument in the production of a strong (but not exclusive) sense of belonging for community members. Population groups subjectify themselves as “communities” and objectify their practices and expressions as “intangible heritage”. Government can then act on the social field through communities and by means of, among other things, intangible heritage policies.
Intangible heritage, 2009
The article presents an ethnographic account of a debate about lists in UNESCO's Intergovernmenta... more The article presents an ethnographic account of a debate about lists in UNESCO's Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts that drafted the Convention for Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The convention's Representative List is a compromise solution reached after intensive disputes and diplomatic confrontations between those who wanted a merit-based List of Treasures or List of Masterpieces similar to the World Heritage List, those who wanted an inclusive universal inventory of traditional practices, and those who wanted no list at all.
The article analyzes the arguments made for the various positions in this debate on listing—from incentive and promotion value (pros) to divisiveness and hierarchization (cons)—and argues that these go to the heart of heritage practices, which are always and inevitably selective. The system of heritage, in other words, is structured on exclusion. It gives value to certain things rather than others with reference to an assortment of criteria that can only be indeterminate and subject to debate—whether the objects designated for safeguarding are selected based on their excellence, outstanding value, authenticity, or, indeed, representativity. In this respect, heritage and lists are not unlike one another: both depend on selection, both decontextualize their objects from their immediate surroundings and recontextualize them with reference to other things designated or listed. It is hardly surprising, then, that listing seems constantly to accompany heritage-making. In the practical context of finite resources and infinite needs, this exclusionary structure—the selectivity that allots to certain objects and not to others the attention, expertise, and capital necessary to delay their disintegration—means that heritage needs to be understood first and foremost as a term of policy.
A Companion to Folklore, 2012
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Books by Valdimar Hafstein
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Various stories circulate within UNESCO about the origins of intangible heritage. Bringing the sensibilities of a folklorist to these narratives, Hafstein explores how they help imagine coherence, conjure up contrast, and provide charters for action in the United Nations and on the ground. Examining the international organization of UNESCO through an ethnographic lens, Hafstein demonstrates how concepts that are central to the discipline of folklore gain force and traction outside of the academic field and go to work in the world, ultimately shaping people’s understanding of their own practices and the practices themselves. From the cultural space of the Jemaa el-Fna marketplace in Marrakech to the Ise Shrine in Japan, Making Intangible Heritage considers both the positive and the troubling outcomes of safeguarding intangible heritage, the lists it brings into being, the festivals it animates, the communities it summons into existence, and the way it orchestrates difference in modern societies.
(Title page, table of contents, first chapter, and abstracts in English)
Films by Valdimar Hafstein
Subtitled in Spanish, French, Italian, English, Icelandic and Mandarin Chinese
Keywords: music, folklore, politics, international relations, intangible heritage, copyright, anthropology
The Flight of the Condor traces the global circulation of the melody “El Condor Pasa”: from the Andes mountains to global metropoles; from Lima to Paris to New York, and back; from panpipes to piano and from symphony orchestras to the disco; from indigenous to popular music; and from world music back to national heritage. Some of the protagonists are: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Daniel Alomía Robles, Alan Lomax, Los Incas, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Company, the Victor Talking Machine Corporation, the Falangist Socialist Party of Bolivia, Chuck Berry, NASA, WIPO and UNESCO.
The story that the film tells shows how individual personalities and states can shape texts that become the foundation of global narratives; and how propositions made for a particular local reason become global instruments with entirely different effects in other corners of the world. Unpacking the global/local dialectic, the film is a case study in paradox; it analyzes the prehistory of international heritage/copyright norms, the way that prehistory travels in oral and written circulation, and the enduring problems it points to in the implementation of these norms.
Papers by Valdimar Hafstein
Introduction to a special issue of Cultural Analysis, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF)
The communalization of heritage and cultural policy helps to form and to reform population groups and thereby to orchestrate differences within the state. In other words, it is a strategy for coping with difference. From this perspective, intangible heritage emerges as an instrument in the production of a strong (but not exclusive) sense of belonging for community members. Population groups subjectify themselves as “communities” and objectify their practices and expressions as “intangible heritage”. Government can then act on the social field through communities and by means of, among other things, intangible heritage policies.
The article analyzes the arguments made for the various positions in this debate on listing—from incentive and promotion value (pros) to divisiveness and hierarchization (cons)—and argues that these go to the heart of heritage practices, which are always and inevitably selective. The system of heritage, in other words, is structured on exclusion. It gives value to certain things rather than others with reference to an assortment of criteria that can only be indeterminate and subject to debate—whether the objects designated for safeguarding are selected based on their excellence, outstanding value, authenticity, or, indeed, representativity. In this respect, heritage and lists are not unlike one another: both depend on selection, both decontextualize their objects from their immediate surroundings and recontextualize them with reference to other things designated or listed. It is hardly surprising, then, that listing seems constantly to accompany heritage-making. In the practical context of finite resources and infinite needs, this exclusionary structure—the selectivity that allots to certain objects and not to others the attention, expertise, and capital necessary to delay their disintegration—means that heritage needs to be understood first and foremost as a term of policy.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/patrimonialities/CC234296DD9DB19C2C902CE31CDA0C4A
Various stories circulate within UNESCO about the origins of intangible heritage. Bringing the sensibilities of a folklorist to these narratives, Hafstein explores how they help imagine coherence, conjure up contrast, and provide charters for action in the United Nations and on the ground. Examining the international organization of UNESCO through an ethnographic lens, Hafstein demonstrates how concepts that are central to the discipline of folklore gain force and traction outside of the academic field and go to work in the world, ultimately shaping people’s understanding of their own practices and the practices themselves. From the cultural space of the Jemaa el-Fna marketplace in Marrakech to the Ise Shrine in Japan, Making Intangible Heritage considers both the positive and the troubling outcomes of safeguarding intangible heritage, the lists it brings into being, the festivals it animates, the communities it summons into existence, and the way it orchestrates difference in modern societies.
(Title page, table of contents, first chapter, and abstracts in English)
Subtitled in Spanish, French, Italian, English, Icelandic and Mandarin Chinese
Keywords: music, folklore, politics, international relations, intangible heritage, copyright, anthropology
The Flight of the Condor traces the global circulation of the melody “El Condor Pasa”: from the Andes mountains to global metropoles; from Lima to Paris to New York, and back; from panpipes to piano and from symphony orchestras to the disco; from indigenous to popular music; and from world music back to national heritage. Some of the protagonists are: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Daniel Alomía Robles, Alan Lomax, Los Incas, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Company, the Victor Talking Machine Corporation, the Falangist Socialist Party of Bolivia, Chuck Berry, NASA, WIPO and UNESCO.
The story that the film tells shows how individual personalities and states can shape texts that become the foundation of global narratives; and how propositions made for a particular local reason become global instruments with entirely different effects in other corners of the world. Unpacking the global/local dialectic, the film is a case study in paradox; it analyzes the prehistory of international heritage/copyright norms, the way that prehistory travels in oral and written circulation, and the enduring problems it points to in the implementation of these norms.
Introduction to a special issue of Cultural Analysis, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF)
The communalization of heritage and cultural policy helps to form and to reform population groups and thereby to orchestrate differences within the state. In other words, it is a strategy for coping with difference. From this perspective, intangible heritage emerges as an instrument in the production of a strong (but not exclusive) sense of belonging for community members. Population groups subjectify themselves as “communities” and objectify their practices and expressions as “intangible heritage”. Government can then act on the social field through communities and by means of, among other things, intangible heritage policies.
The article analyzes the arguments made for the various positions in this debate on listing—from incentive and promotion value (pros) to divisiveness and hierarchization (cons)—and argues that these go to the heart of heritage practices, which are always and inevitably selective. The system of heritage, in other words, is structured on exclusion. It gives value to certain things rather than others with reference to an assortment of criteria that can only be indeterminate and subject to debate—whether the objects designated for safeguarding are selected based on their excellence, outstanding value, authenticity, or, indeed, representativity. In this respect, heritage and lists are not unlike one another: both depend on selection, both decontextualize their objects from their immediate surroundings and recontextualize them with reference to other things designated or listed. It is hardly surprising, then, that listing seems constantly to accompany heritage-making. In the practical context of finite resources and infinite needs, this exclusionary structure—the selectivity that allots to certain objects and not to others the attention, expertise, and capital necessary to delay their disintegration—means that heritage needs to be understood first and foremost as a term of policy.
Theme:
"Utopias, Realities, Heritages: Ethnographies for the 21st Century"
Call for panels closes 9 November 2014
Call for papers closes 14 January 2015
Read more and register at: www.siefhome.org
“Trusting Resistance. New Ethnographies of Social Movements and Alternative Economies”
Date: July 24-30, 2016
Venue: Hohentübingen Castle, University of Tübingen, Germany
Convened by: Prof. Dr. Monique Scheer (Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft)
Deadline for proposal submission: March 20, 2016
This international summer school combines two highly debated topics: trust and resistance. From protest to critical consumption, to the do-it-yourself movement, to radical gardening or alternative health care: when groups are formed in resistance to an 'establishment' or 'mainstream', they often express a lack of trust in the 'powers that be' – therefore, practices of mistrust seem to be constitutive for such movements. On the other hand, within the group it is important to establish trust in the alternative models being tried out. Thus, it would seem that trust and mistrust operate in these cases as a dynamic motor for change. Thinking about the conceptualization of trust and mistrust will necessarily be part of the discussion. Is trust an attitude, an ethic, a virtue, or a feeling, perhaps even an emotion? From the ethnographic perspective, it makes sense to look at trust and mistrust in connection with the practices that mobilize and cultivate them. Thus, the summer school will also encourage the participants to go beyond trust/mistrust to think about the role of other feelings and attitudes important to the groups they are studying as well. We would like to offer a space for exploring this dynamic more deeply with PhD students and early postdocs working on research projects in the above-mentioned areas. We invite anyone taking an ethnographic approach to the culture of resistance, studying social movements, political and consumer protest, activism in its many forms, to participate in this summer school. European ethnologists, folklorists, anthropologists, cultural studies scholars,
sociologists, historians, and political scientists are all welcome to apply. The focus is on looking at trust/mistrust at the micro-level of everyday life and social interactions. This includes not only
attention to the practical dimensions of doings and sayings, thinking and feelings, but also considering the importance of material artifacts, sensory impressions, sounds, images,
performances, rituals, spaces, and places. Participants at any stage of their research – including beginning PhD students – will have an opportunity to present work in progress and to discuss
central research issues. To ensure an open and collaborative learning environment, the number of participants will be limited to a maximum of 25.
The working language is English. Participants can earn a maximum of 6 ECTS points. The summer school will be held at the University of Tübingen, Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft in the beautiful Hohentübingen Castle.
Please apply by sending a short CV and an abstract describing your research project and how it relates to the issue of trust/mistrust (approx. 500 words) by March 20, 2016. Please send your applications to [email protected]
Successful applicants will be notified by email no later than April 15.
The registration fee for participants is 30 €. Participants are expected to take part in the full duration of the summer school. We are able to provide accommodation (double rooms, incl. breakfast) and lunch snack, but we cannot reimburse travel expenses. Please inquire at your university to apply for
travel funding.
Please feel free to contact us for specific questions about the program or application. Write to Elisabeth Socha (U Tübingen): [email protected]