in: HOOF (W. Van)(ed.), Catching the Spirit. Theatrical Assets of Historic Houses and their Approaches in Reinventing the Past, Catching the Spirit. Theatrical Assets of Historic Houses and their Approaches in Reinventing the Past, Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus/ICOM-DEMHIST, 2012, pp. 56-64., 2012
Uploads
Papers by Marc Jacobs
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage enriches the
paradigm of the 2003 UNESCO Convention. At the meeting of its
Intergovernmental Committee at Windhoek where those
principles were endorsed, and where a whole chapter of new
operational directives was fine-tuned in order to respond to the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN General
Assembly, 25 September 2015), the UNESCO Secretariat was
instructed to build an on-line platform with a toolkit about
ethics and safeguarding intangible heritage. Accredited NGOs
were also finally invited to collaborate and play a role in
developing and updating the 2003 UNESCO Convention and its
operational directives. This is a major breakthrough. In this
article we trace and discuss this ‘hop’ (1999), ‘skip’ (2012-2015)
and ‘jump’ process (2016 onwards) in the emerging paradigm of
safeguarding ICH. Why twelve principles and not a supermodel
code of ethics for (safeguarding) intangible heritage?
How do innovations like ‘sustained free and informed consent’
or ‘benefit sharing’ open new doors? What do anthropology,
folklore studies and museology have to offer? Is the online
platform a good idea, in the light of recent developments in
international conventions on biodiversity, bioethics or the work
of WIPO and other organisations ?
Keywords
Operational Directives, Intergovernmental Committee, Ethics,
Prior and Informed Consent, Benefit sharing, Sustainable
development, Anthropology, Folklore studies, Cultural
brokerage, PIC-ABS
Intergovernmental Committee of the 2003 UNESCO
Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural
Heritage, inscribed shrimp fishing on horseback
in Oostduinkerke (Flanders, Belgium) in the Representative
List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Humanity. On the one hand, this can be considered
as an interesting example of sustainable development
with regard to the relation between local
groups and communities, policy makers (in the fields
of culture and tourism), beaches and the sea, and
on the other hand an occasion to stimulate reflection
on the relation between traditional know-how,
cultural spaces and intangible heritage. The recent
history of how the nomination file was assembled,
of the follow-up after inscription, and of the special
roles played by heritage brokers and a local museum
specialized in the history and ethnology of fishing,
allow to discuss opportunities and challenges of the
new paradigm of safeguarding intangible cultural
heritage. In order to interpret these findings, two
models are used as sensitizing devices. For one thing
the famous article in actor-network theory – on the
sociology of translation and the “domestication of
the scallops”, by Michel Callon – will be mobilized,
whereas the Harvard Business Blue Ocean model,
developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne,
can function as an eye-opener.
Bruegel from the Low Countries, can function as eyeopeners
to understand how ‘popular culture’ is mediated or
how successful multi-media inventories can be for cultural
repertoires. These paintings were also used in Peter Burke’s
Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. In order to fully
understand the recent developments before and since the
2003 UNESCO Convention, it is necessary to situate these in
a long term perspective, and Burke’s book remains a relevant
classic. This exercise helps us to recognise a number of
implicit or invisible criteria for the lists of the Convention -
like the ‘no-electricity’ rule. For the UNESCO lists, both
popular and court/elite forms of culture from outside Europe
seem to qualify, but for Europe, only expressions of popular
culture are listed; the ‘elite culture’ tacitly falls outside the
scope, up to now.
Waiting for a wikipedia-like formula with peer review to
facilitate a really representative list, the New Delhi consensus
expressed in the first paragraphs of the operational directives
holds up to now: easy criteria, but a hair-splitting treatment
of the forms and bottle necks and dams in the pipelines of
processing the files, in order to slow down the inflation effect
that would follow mass inscription. The constructivist nature
of the definition of intangible cultural heritage in Article 2 of
the 2003 Convention, and the possibility of using the lists -
and registration system - to create eye-openers and
precedents allows for innovation and change.
전문가 검토를 포함한 위키피디아식(wikipedia-like) 체계가 진정한 대표목록을 구성할 것으로 기대하고 있지만, 현재까지는 운영지침의 기반이된 뉴델리 합의(New Delhi consensus)가 유효하다. 기준은 단순하지만 지엽적인 사항까지 모두 기록해야 하는 서식과 서류 심사 과정에서 통과해야 하는 수많은 난관은 대량 등재로 인한 인플레이션 효과를 지양하기 위해 불가피한 상황이라는 것이다. 2003년 협약 제2조에 명시된 무형문화유산의 정의와 인식 제고 및 선례 마련을 위한 목록 등재 시스템은 변화와 혁신이 필요한 것으로 보인다.
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage enriches the
paradigm of the 2003 UNESCO Convention. At the meeting of its
Intergovernmental Committee at Windhoek where those
principles were endorsed, and where a whole chapter of new
operational directives was fine-tuned in order to respond to the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN General
Assembly, 25 September 2015), the UNESCO Secretariat was
instructed to build an on-line platform with a toolkit about
ethics and safeguarding intangible heritage. Accredited NGOs
were also finally invited to collaborate and play a role in
developing and updating the 2003 UNESCO Convention and its
operational directives. This is a major breakthrough. In this
article we trace and discuss this ‘hop’ (1999), ‘skip’ (2012-2015)
and ‘jump’ process (2016 onwards) in the emerging paradigm of
safeguarding ICH. Why twelve principles and not a supermodel
code of ethics for (safeguarding) intangible heritage?
How do innovations like ‘sustained free and informed consent’
or ‘benefit sharing’ open new doors? What do anthropology,
folklore studies and museology have to offer? Is the online
platform a good idea, in the light of recent developments in
international conventions on biodiversity, bioethics or the work
of WIPO and other organisations ?
Keywords
Operational Directives, Intergovernmental Committee, Ethics,
Prior and Informed Consent, Benefit sharing, Sustainable
development, Anthropology, Folklore studies, Cultural
brokerage, PIC-ABS
Intergovernmental Committee of the 2003 UNESCO
Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural
Heritage, inscribed shrimp fishing on horseback
in Oostduinkerke (Flanders, Belgium) in the Representative
List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Humanity. On the one hand, this can be considered
as an interesting example of sustainable development
with regard to the relation between local
groups and communities, policy makers (in the fields
of culture and tourism), beaches and the sea, and
on the other hand an occasion to stimulate reflection
on the relation between traditional know-how,
cultural spaces and intangible heritage. The recent
history of how the nomination file was assembled,
of the follow-up after inscription, and of the special
roles played by heritage brokers and a local museum
specialized in the history and ethnology of fishing,
allow to discuss opportunities and challenges of the
new paradigm of safeguarding intangible cultural
heritage. In order to interpret these findings, two
models are used as sensitizing devices. For one thing
the famous article in actor-network theory – on the
sociology of translation and the “domestication of
the scallops”, by Michel Callon – will be mobilized,
whereas the Harvard Business Blue Ocean model,
developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne,
can function as an eye-opener.
Bruegel from the Low Countries, can function as eyeopeners
to understand how ‘popular culture’ is mediated or
how successful multi-media inventories can be for cultural
repertoires. These paintings were also used in Peter Burke’s
Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. In order to fully
understand the recent developments before and since the
2003 UNESCO Convention, it is necessary to situate these in
a long term perspective, and Burke’s book remains a relevant
classic. This exercise helps us to recognise a number of
implicit or invisible criteria for the lists of the Convention -
like the ‘no-electricity’ rule. For the UNESCO lists, both
popular and court/elite forms of culture from outside Europe
seem to qualify, but for Europe, only expressions of popular
culture are listed; the ‘elite culture’ tacitly falls outside the
scope, up to now.
Waiting for a wikipedia-like formula with peer review to
facilitate a really representative list, the New Delhi consensus
expressed in the first paragraphs of the operational directives
holds up to now: easy criteria, but a hair-splitting treatment
of the forms and bottle necks and dams in the pipelines of
processing the files, in order to slow down the inflation effect
that would follow mass inscription. The constructivist nature
of the definition of intangible cultural heritage in Article 2 of
the 2003 Convention, and the possibility of using the lists -
and registration system - to create eye-openers and
precedents allows for innovation and change.
전문가 검토를 포함한 위키피디아식(wikipedia-like) 체계가 진정한 대표목록을 구성할 것으로 기대하고 있지만, 현재까지는 운영지침의 기반이된 뉴델리 합의(New Delhi consensus)가 유효하다. 기준은 단순하지만 지엽적인 사항까지 모두 기록해야 하는 서식과 서류 심사 과정에서 통과해야 하는 수많은 난관은 대량 등재로 인한 인플레이션 효과를 지양하기 위해 불가피한 상황이라는 것이다. 2003년 협약 제2조에 명시된 무형문화유산의 정의와 인식 제고 및 선례 마련을 위한 목록 등재 시스템은 변화와 혁신이 필요한 것으로 보인다.