Communities and Cultural Heritage

In LIPP, Wilfred et al. (eds.) Conservation Turn-Return to Conservation. Tolerance for Change, Limits of Change, Recordings of the International Conference of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for the Theory and the Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration, 3-6 march 2011, Florence, Edizioni Polistampa, Firenza, 2012, ISBN: 978-88-596-1079-3

Council of Europe, 2018

Reframing the role of local communities and stakeholders Acknowledging that heritage is now better understood as being both determined by and the responsibility of local communities, their participation from the outset is clearly essential to reach a common understanding of the objectives connected to it (Ripp and Rodwell 2016). To shape this action space for the best possible benefit, the identification and integration of all stakeholders is essential. Definitions of stakeholder are various, from those institutions and individuals who have a dominant political and financial interest in a place, to anyone who has physical or intellectual access to it. For the purposes of this chapter, three classifications are useful: primary, direct users (local community); secondary, indirect users (incoming traders, consumers and tourists, service providers, and other employment and visitor-related categories); and tertiary, influential (governmental, non-governmental, academia, and outside investors).2 Engaging with citizens as the primary stakeholders matches closest with the shift in roles discussed above. The complexities and interrelationships inherent in today's comprehension of cultural heritage-community-oriented, dynamic rather than static, systemic not linear-demand management systems, especially within administrations and institutions, that replace "the usual sector or one-dimensional approaches with new transversal or multidimensional ones, aligning different policy areas and resources … taking into account the role of each part in the whole structure" (European Union 2010). It is the communities of practice (Wenger 1998), the informal, self-generating networks that condition whether an organization functions as a dynamic system, and are critical to its ability to function effectively in today's world.

Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2018

This paper discusses the meanings and socio-cultural implications of "communities" in the context of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH), based on several pieces of relevant documents written by UNESCO and the experts in the field. The notion of "community" has been one of the key concepts in defining, safeguarding, and inscribing the intangible cultural heritages (ICH) in the context of UNESCO Programmes. In addition, the relationship between the communities and the ICH in academic analyses and policy-making is highly complex, multifaceted, and closely interrelated that the two cannot be discussed separately. Based on the analyses and examination of ethnographic cases, this paper concludes that, although the communities' opinions should be taken seriously in planning and implementing ICH safeguarding, it is important to consider the fact that the members of the communities are not homogeneous or in the same opinion.

2012

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

One way to expand management and preservation policies is to consider supporting cultural heritage that values the intimacy of associations through the active renewal of community and family connections such as rituals and tradition making. Many of these associations are not grounded primarily in the preservation of tangible or physical resources (ie, old buildings, monuments, or battlefield) or driven solely by profit motives. This discussion defines cultural heritage as a continuum of possibilities that includes tangible resources but also other acts of identity-making that are about process, discourse, and performance. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) has recognized the importance of this kind of heritage as well, and in 2003, proposed Conventions for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This article argues that cultural heritage can be seen as a form of agency and a way to help people and communities make links between the past and the present in dynamic and nuanced ways. [Anthropology News, Volume 55, Issue 3, pp. e21-e61, March 2014]

História: Questões & Debates

A Conferência da Associação de Estudos Críticos de Patrimônio de 2016, ocorrida em Montreal, Canadá, colocou uma questão “O que o patrimônio muda?”. A sessão organizada por Allison Bain e Réginald Auger teve como objetivo analisar os aspectos arqueológicos sob o título “O que o patrimônio muda? Estudos de caso na Arqueologia.” Os artigos apresentados, de escopo internacional, passam uma mensagem comum: arqueologia contemporânea serve melhor a humanidade quando os governos protegem sítios arqueológicos com legislação, financiamento e gestão; quando a propriedade patrimonial é reconhecida; pesquisa comunitária é realizada; e quando arqueólogos estabelecem parcerias de longa duração com a comunidade local. Arqueologia pode se tornar um instrumento de mudança no mundo contemporâneo, em especial para o bem-estar das comunidades locais.

Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 2018

2015

When UNESCO adopted the "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore" in 1989, a new concept was articulated in the context of international cultural policy (Kurin 2001). The understanding of cultural heritage 2 The Aims of the Vigoni Conferences The starting point for three international and interdisciplinary conferences held at Villa Vigoni in 2010, 2011 and 2012 was the circulation of the concepts of community and participation, their entanglement with notions of territoriality, and different political and social fields concerned with matters of cultural heritage. How and by whom were these concepts interpreted and re-interpreted, and what effects did they bring forth in their implementation? What impact, rhetorically and practically, was wielded by these terms, and what kinds of discursive formations did they bring forth? How do actors from local to national levels interpret this new component of the heritage regime, and how do actors within heritage-granting national and international bodies work it into their cultural and political agency? Which new relationships and networks unfold within the negotiation processes between different representatives of communities and those actors who think and act within UNESCO's "professional heritage enterprise" (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004: 55). What is the role of experts and expertise, indeed, what counts as expertise and when is scientific knowledge expertise and when is it partisan, supportive matter in the nomination process of the future (in)tangible heritage of humankind? How do Community, Participation and Territory from a Legal Perspective The critical approaches of disciplines working and arguing ethnographically are only one discursive contribution in heritage implementation. The Vigoni program sought explicitly to analyze the participation paradigm within heritage making from an interdisciplinary perspective. In such an arrangement, interpretive perspectives confront the more normative approaches, which are, generally, also those drawn on by state and local bureaucracies in the implementation of heritage conventions. Legal expertise is, after all, what a polity draws on to explain and, in the process, contribute to the development and implementation of guidelines for any new legislation. Within the Vigoni conferences, we sought to understand the inner, discipli-***** Christoph Brumann differentiated between heritage believers, heritage atheists and heritage agnostics in an earlier article (2014), and the Vigoni meetings brought together representatives of these different groups. Several papers in this volume are examples of academic engagement in heritage making and in heritage policy making, and provide evidence of a scholarly, multidisciplinary "will to improve" (Li 2007). The tension between personal convictions, local and professional engagement as experts, and scientific analysis are not easy for some authors to bridge. The contributions of this volume also constitute further extensions of the UNESCO heritage assemblage. The materials discussed and presented here through case studies, theoretical reflections or legal considerations may serve as evidence for the necessity of interdisciplinary dialogue. However, they also affirm, perhaps with particular poignancy given the highly political and politicized field of heritage, the enormous challenge of engaged research. It is a challenge, as Bortolotto states in concluding her paper, that is good to think about, and it is a challenge reaching far beyond the heritage field.

Current Anthropology, 2008

Community archaeology has conferred an alternative dimension on conventional archaeology and heritage management, empowering previously powerless peoples, particularly the indigenous and local communities that have lost rights to their heritage through colonialism. So important has its impact been that there has been only limited reference in the literature to its problems. Examination of case studies from various parts of the world reveals that problems associated with defining what a community is and who is indigenous, coupled with the existence of multiple communities with multiple interests, have sometimes diminished the utility of the approach. In some cases, archaeologists and heritage managers have been unwilling to give up some of their powers and have continued to view local communities as only passive partners. In others, local communities have considered their views and concerns more important than those of the archaeologists. As a result, the so-called equal partnerships between archaeologists and communities have disappointingly ended up as uneasy relationships. Without effective solutions to some of these problems, community archeology may remain a goal to be pursued rather than becoming standard practice.

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.