Project

Discipline

heritage; culture; UNESCO; folklore; museums; story-telling; theater; hip hop; folk medecine; know-how; multimedia

Lead
Lay summary
The concept of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter "ICH") has been in circulation since the 1970s and has spawned a number of measures, culminating in the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is the fruit of the realization that previous measures to protect heritage have unduly favored rich, industrialized countries, with their monumental constructions, over countries in the "South" in which cultural products often take more intangible forms: rituals, musique, belief-systems, etc, that deserve international protection. Switzerland ratified this Convention on July 18th, 2008. Under its terms, the government is obliged to create an inventory of Swiss ICH. Given the relative novelty of the ICH paradigm, its broad political mission and the latitude granted to signatory states, one would think that the application of the UNESCO Convention in the Swiss context would be open to widely diverse interpretations. In fact, a certain number of commonsense understandings of ICH, promoted by associations for folk traditions, are largely determining the ways in which Switzerland positions itself in relation to its treaty obligations. The broadest aim of this multidisciplinary research project is to keep reflections on ICH open at this initial stage by critically examining what it might mean, whom it might benefit and what might be worth inventorying and preserving under its auspices. The project explores these questions through a series of targeted empirical case studies. We ask: How we can meaningfully distinguish material from immaterial cultural expression? How can we reconcile the use of media (writing, recording, photography and film) necessary for the constitution and preservation of ICH with the charged norms of orality, immediacy and authenticity underlying the ICH paradigm? Are items of ICH distributed in space and time according to the community-based UNESCO model, and if not, what are the relevant units of analysis? What is the relation of ICH to the various forms of culture, including elite culture, already supported by other institutions? Which groups does ICH favor, whose cultural expressions are included and whose are excluded? Finally, how does the bureaucratization of cultural preservation alter its object, creating new understandings of culture and new resources for which social actors will be inclined to compete?The project brings together research teams from the Universities of Basel, Lausanne and Neuchâtel, the Museum of Ethnography (Neuchâtel), the CNRS (Laboratoire d'anthropologie et d'histoire de l'institution de la culture, Paris) and the Haute Ecole-Arc (Institut horlogerie et création).

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 21.02.2013

Active participation

Self-organised

Active participation

Self-organised

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

Title	Year

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

Summary - Intangible Cultural Heritage: the Midas Touch? The concept of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter "ICH") has been in circulation since the 1970s and has spawned a number of measures, culminating in the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This is the fruit of a growing realization that previous measures to protect heritage have unduly favored rich, industrialized countries, with their monumental constructions and works of art. Through the Convention, the concept of heritage has been officially expanded to include "living expressions and the traditions that countless groups and communities worldwide have inherited from their ancestors and transmit to their descendants, in most cases orally" (UNESCO website). Article 2 subsumes these expressions under five categories: a) oral traditions and expression; b) performing arts; c) social practices, rituals and festive events; d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; and e) traditional craftsmanship. Switzerland ratified this Convention on July 18th, 2008. Under its terms, the government is obliged to create an inventory of Swiss ICH. The Convention leaves signatory states a large degree of liberty in their interpretation of how they will carry out this task. However, the division of labor between the federal and cantonal governments set forth in the Swiss constitution requires close collaboration between the Federal Office for Culture and the cantons, specifically in the drawing up of selection criteria and of guidelines for their application. Given the relative novelty of the ICH paradigm, its broad yet highly political mission and the latitude granted to signatory states, one would think that the application of the UNESCO Convention in the Swiss context would be open to widely diverse interpretations. In fact, however, a certain number of commonsense understandings of ICH, promoted by predictable social actors such as associations for the promotion of folk traditions, are largely determining the ways in which Switzerland positions itself in relation to its treaty obligations. The broadest aim of this multidisciplinary research project is to keep reflections on ICH as open as possible at this initial stage, and to provide a scientific space for critically examining what it might mean, whom it might benefit and what might be worth inventorying and preserving under its auspices. As our title indicates, we also wish to call attention to the richness but also the paradoxes and potentially undesirable consequences of the ICH paradigm. The project explores the principal issues raised by ICH through a series of targeted empirical case studies. We ask: How we can meaningfully distinguish material from immaterial cultural expression? How can we reconcile the use of media (writing, recording, photography and film) necessary for the constitution and preservation of ICH with the charged norms of orality, immediacy and authenticity underlying the ICH paradigm? Are items of ICH distributed in space and time according to the community-based UNESCO model, and if not, what are the relevant units of analysis? What is the relation of ICH to the various forms of culture, including so-called "elite culture," already supported by other institutions? Which groups does ICH favor, whose cultural expressions are included and whose are excluded? Finally, how does the bureaucratization of cultural preservation alter its object, creating new understandings of culture and new resources for which social actors will be inclined to compete?Six subprojects, guided by a common set of research goals, questions and methods, will allow us to explore these questions from a variety of angles. Subproject A is an institutional ethnography of the inventory process in three Swiss cantons. Subprojects B-E are designed as in-depth ethnographic studies of potential items of ICH that do not fall within the commonsense understanding exposed above but nonetheless correspond to the five subcategories specified in the 2003 Convention. These are: a) collections of stories told in dialect; b) migrant theater repertories; c) hip-hop performance; d) "traditional" healing practices; and e) watchmaker know-how in the Jura region. Finally, Subproject F involves the constitution of an alternative inventory of ICH for and in Switzerland, in which the issues of data collection, classification, multimedia representation and the public will be examined specifically in relation to the opportunities and problems that the ICH paradigm creates for museums.The project involves six research groups working in the fields of anthropology, folklore and cultural studies, dialectology and museum studies, and associated with the Universities of Basel (Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie), Lausanne (Institut d'anthropologie et de sociologie), Neuchâtel (Institut d'ethnologie; Centre de dialectologie), the Museum of Ethnography of the City of Neuchâtel, the CNRS (Laboratoire d'anthropologie et d'histoire de l'institution de la culture, Paris) and the Haute Ecole-Arc (Institut horlogerie et creation, La Chaux-du-Fonds). It represents an original and timely contribution to our understanding of cultural politics, in Switzerland and internationally.