Folk Art, Tradition and Ideology

Journal of American Folklore, 2018

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.

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica

The present study introduces the role played by the Hungarian Heritage House in applied ethnography and the folk art revival. It is the first such study to review their antecedents over the past 70 years, the evolution of the institutional background, and activities of varying emphasis (research, teaching, certification) in the fields of folk dance, folk music, and folk handicrafts. The second part of the study evaluates professional tasks in the context of the organizational framework of the Hungarian Heritage House, which was founded in 2001, highlighting the internal relationships among activities embedded within the historically developed structure. The study then goes on to describe the intermediary role of the institution in relation to the practical use/usefulness of basic ethnographic research in terms of: (a) knowledge transfer — the utilization of basic ethnographic research in trainings and courses; and (b) digitization — ensuring wide access to ethnographically authentic...

Contemporary science and technologies largely widen the gap between the spiritual and rational of the society. Industrial and technological breakthroughs might radically affect most processes in the society, thus losing the cultural heritage. The thinkers recognized the dangers of the decadence in the first place. In the present article the ways of preserving cultural heritage have been investigated. Memory has always been a necessary condition for selfidentification, - continuity is based on this. The authors have supported the hypothesis that continuity and ethnic memory are the very mechanisms that preserve cultural heritage. Such problemformulating will facilitate another, new look at the material, spiritual and arts spheres of the cultural heritage of numerous ethnic groups. The fundamental works by major European and Kazakh scientists have been taken as a basis for the research done.

In the last few decades some major theoretical and methodological shifts have characterized the interconnected disciplines of Anthropology, Folkloristics, Ethnology of Europe, and Cultural History. Many categories and notions long used (and sporadically abused) have been thoroughly problematized, at times profoundly questioned, and even abandoned. The purpose of this panel is to discuss how these shifts have affected both the common and the academic usages of two of these notions: those of “Folklore” and “Intangible heritage”. “Folklore” is a term doubtless characterized by apparently separated but actually interwoven etic and emic connotations. Indeed it often shows a certain degree of semantic entanglement (or tension) between the two, and a capacity for circulating in interstitial terminological grounds and non-hegemonic discourses. Conversely, at first “intangible heritage” could be thought of as a technical category only. However, recent ethnographic evidence demonstrates that, in its simpler version – “heritage” without an adjective, still used to refer also to real intangible heritages – it is actually present also in non-professional and non-academic fields, being discussed and negotiated, for a rather diverse set of aims, in many social arenas, and in Europe as well as elsewhere. This panel intends to address these issues newly and foster further theorization about them. This will be done by gathering contributions that will try to merge ethnographic and/or historical data, theoretical insights, and methodological applications, yet without neglecting the conclusions drawn in the already abundant literature that so far has dealt with similar topics.

PhD Dissertation, Universidad de León. Contents, Conclusions and Bibliography only, 2013

1. We can account for power configurations as by-products of specific heritage assemblages and configurations. Conceived this way, it ceases to be a transcendent entity to become an ambiguous but earthly process whose conditions of emergence can be traced and challenged. 2. Heritage is granted an ontological status and is not only considered as an epistemological construct, thus being co-constitutive of reality and inherently political: it builds subjectivities, breaks apart, or reinforces specific states of things. It is slippery and diffuse, and can hardly be accounted for through ideological critique as it is neither bad or good, progressive or reactionary. This will depend on the affects and connections it promotes, the energies it releases or restrains, and the subjectivities and ways of life it constructs. 3. Heritage is as much a physical construct as it is a social or political one – does not intangible heritage comprise bodies? –. To understand heritage as meaning and mere political representation, or contrarily as a thing ruled by ‘natural’ laws of market value, is problematic. With Latour, we can talk about construction, but not only about ‘social construction’ (Latour 2005c). This mechanism will enable us “to produce problematized matters of concern: things rather than objects” (Zaera-Polo 2008: 76). 4. The dichotomy between explanation and interpretation vanishes. Because heritage presents open-ended interpretations and cannot be framed within a closed set of causal relations and laws, we can only provide partial explanations and understandings (Law 2004a). Therefore, we should avoid the reductionist getaway that bestows agency to entities which irradiate meaning and act as primary causes, such as the State (Breglia 2006; Herzfeld 2010), the State and the elites (García Canclini 1999), the professionals and experts (Smith 2006) or Capital (Harvey 2001)) The existence of certain powerful agencies in heritage – which I do not deny – cannot prevent us from looking at processes of social mimicry and contagion, struggles –material and symbolic – around objects, and to acknowledge the ’diffuse’ character of heritage that renders it so slippery. 5. Assemblages are always involved in different lower and higher level assemblages. Therefore, we should abandon the infeasible hard-line scientific task of ‘individuating heritage data’ or striving to define ‘what is heritage’. We must face instability and assume that heritage is diffuse, which does not undermine its ontological status whatsoever. Furthermore, assemblages are boundless and open-ended. Consequently, without relinquishing thorough methodological depth, we must acknowledge that our analyses are fundamentally incomplete. Referring to the issue of analysis, Geertz argues that “the more deeply it goes the less complete it is There are a number of ways of escaping this—turning culture into folklore and collecting it, turning it into traits and counting it, turning it into institutions and classifying it, turning it into structures and toying with it. But they are escapes” (Geertz 1973a: 29). 6. Heritage and spatial planners cannot take heritage value for granted and must be sensitive to the particularities of each context, thus jettisoning universal concepts and empty signifiers such as community or sustainability (Gunder 2006). There are no heritage resources, but rather processes of valorization to be modulated according to planning criteria

The aim of this panel is to gather and discuss historically and ethnographically informed papers about the symbolic, political, and religious reconfiguration of European "traditions" in the broad emic and etic senses of the word. Invention (Hobsbwam and Ranger dir. 1988), revitalisation (Boissevain dir. 1992), commodification (Comaroff and Comaroff dir. 2009), bureaucratisation (Herzfeld 1992), and ʻpast presencingʼ (Macdonald 2013) are among the main concepts social scientists use to interpret and understand the dynamics of cultural transformations in late-modern societies. We have chosen to focus on alternative paradigms, i.e. re-enchantment, ritualisation, and heritage-making, which can open the discussion up to the symbolic and sensitive dimensions of cultural dynamics. The panel also aims to rethink the theoretical scope and significance of these notions vis-à-vis the more classical concepts that link culture to economics or politics. This will be done on the basis of the sources and evidence informing the ethnographic and historical case studies presented in the papers. How are magic and supernatural powers publicly experienced? How can the ritualisation of a craft interweave with its commodification? What place do individuals' sensations and feelings have in the construction and demonstration of cultural commons? Speakers are encouraged to present cases from rural as well as urban contexts. Papers problematising both institutional/well-established and new/unofficial religions, crafts, food, monuments, as well as representations of nature are welcome. We also invite potential speakers to present not only examples of UNESCO heritage-making or NGO development policies, but also others concerning local, regional, or national groups and associations.

2007

Commission "Archaeology & Conservation 2/3" ABSTRACT: After stressing the importance of knowledge and listing the different phases regarding the preservation and valorisation of artistic heritage, the authors have analysed the inherent problems of preserving the integrity and identity of a particular object of cultural heritage, also from a legislative point of view (from national law n. 1089 of 1939 to the recent New Code for Cultural Heritage and Environment of 2004).

Ethnologies, 2019

Folklore, 2018

The article critically engages with the articulations and manifestations of a UNESCO initiative for the safeguarding of so-called intangible cultural heritage in Croatian context in the first years of the active Croatian implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2009–2013). It presents the intersections of a UNESCO initiative with past and present thnology and folklore research in Croatia. Though one might get the impression (not entirely unfounded) that the project of protecting or safeguarding intangible heritage within the Croatian context first and foremost constitutes a global, imported product, the notion of protecting or safeguarding intangible cultural heritage can also be traced in the history of Croatian ethnology, folkloristics, art conservation, legislation, and folklore festivals production. A strong tendency to transform culture into a slick product can be seen as the main or only ‘innovative’ aspect of transmitting the old concepts into the contemporary framework of the UNESCO initiative. It seems like this aspect makes it easier for everyone involved – state administration and experts and those to whom a given cultural practice ‘belongs’ – to ignore ‘the side effects’ of the UNESCO initiative and the processes of its implementation that are discussed in the article. These side effects, perhaps not so visibly, concern society as a whole, and more directly local communities, as well as our specific professions and disciplines: ethnology and folkloristics. A somewhat different variant of this article was originally published in Croatian, as an introduction to Proizvodnja baštine: kritičke studije o nematerijalnoj kulturi (The Production of Heritage: Critical Studies on Intangible Culture) (edited by Marijana Hameršak, Iva Pleše, and Ana-Marija Vukušić), a collection of essays published in 2013 by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb.

Historia@Teoria, 2016

CULTURAL HERITAGE AS THE HERITAGE OF MEMORY Th e area of Central and Eastern Europe is characterised by a remarkable concentration of various sites of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Th is abundance, which was created over many centuries, now still serves both these who consider themselves the successors of the former inhabitants of the area and the descendants of those who arrived there thanks to one of the waves of sett lement before the 20th century or due to forced migrations aft er the 20th-century wars. Over the last two centuries this part of Europe, whose elite culture was dominated by the rivalry of two German states (of the Catholic Habsburgs and the Protestant Hohenzollerns), was a virtual ethnic melting pot, in which many diff erent cultures co-existed and infl uenced one another. Th eir memory was preserved in the objects of material and non-material culture. Regardless of the diff erences in the approach, the topics of the papers collected in this volume are focused on the Central European cultural heritage understood as the heritage of memory, particularly the memory which has emerged and existed in relation with border areas. Each of the addressed issues transports us to the past in the search for material and non-material sources of this heritage. Moreover, each paper contains references to the present-day reception of the old heritage of memory, which now takes place through a diff erent community: one that is currently responsible for this heritage. According to the UN Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), various monuments and architectural works, secular and sacral, groups of buildings and sites "of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnologica, or anthropological point of view". Whereas the UN Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) results from many years of searching, which focused on coining a defi nition of this elusive heritage. It is assumed that this very heritage comprises our collective memory. As much as the material culture sustains the identity of the nation, the spiritual, intangible heritage creates, shapes, and enriches it, stimulating its material expression. Th e intangible cultural heritage includes "the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills-as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces (...)-that communities [and] groups recognize as

Ethnologia Europaea, 2020

"Tradition" has been a key concept and object of European ethnology from the foundation of the discipline all the way to intangible cultural heritage policies today. A focus has been given to the cultural and social circulations and permutations affecting traditional facts and has shown the plasticity of "traditions" to (ever-)changing social conditions. Understood as "uses of the past", these mainly political and sociological understandings of what "tradition" means today need to be complemented with a view on the emotional aspects of this peculiarly human way of imagining and experiencing the world. This text introduces three notions which highlight the experiential dimension of tradition: re-enchantment, ritualization, and heritage-making. We hope to forge new paths towards the exploration of all things "traditional" and their cultural dynamics.

Experiencing constant changes of surrounding us reality and pluralism of cultural models have become synonymous with contemporaneity. The experienced eclecticism force reflection on ourself and our own place in the world. It is the cause of instability in defining identity, especially among the younger generation that needs a durable foundation on which constitute the formation of their self-identification. This process is not easy. On the one hand, we observe a tendency of unification of culture through mass media, globalism, economic and cultural homogenization, while on the other side regionalism is being more and more intensively reborn, often accompanied by local isolationism and xenophobia, threats arising from danger to own orbis interior. Therefore, the concept of identity is now an essential conceptual tool in attempts to explain or understand the key cultural phenomenon of our time, and in the analysis of the human situation in the world today (Bokszański 1989: 6).

The author advocates the use of the phrase “intangible culture” instead of “intangible cultural heritage”. The word “heritage” implies a certain fixity and immutability, and assumes that authorities have identified and proclaimed heritage. Dealing with intangible culture would provide the opportunity for the deflection of the UNESCO model of preserving intangible cultural phenomena, whose application has brought some problems. The author illustrates this in practice with the example of bell-ringers, who are included on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.