Natural and cultural heritage

We receive communal legacies from two sources—the natural environment and the creations of human beings. To be sure, these inheritances everywhere commingle; no aspect of nature is unimpacted by human agency, no artefact devoid of environmental impress. Yet we have traditionally dealt quite differently with these two kinds of legacy. Though management of both heritages has many features in common, and both realms often share similar, if not the same, leaders and spokesmen, relations between the two are marked less by cooperative amity than by envy and rivalry. This essay discusses the reasons for our dissimilar approaches to nature and culture, and shows how they bear on the campaigns to protect and preserve each. In some important ways, the history, politics, and rhetoric of conservation and destruction are shown to have converged, in others to have diverged, over the last half century.     

Crimes against cultural heritage in Timbuktu

On 3 March 2016, Ahmad al‐Faqi al‐Mahdi sat in a courtroom at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and became the first person to be prosecuted for the destruction of cultural sites as a war crime. In this article, the author argues that it is no coincidence that the first case the ICC has brought to justice involves a UNESCO World Heritage site. She charts the history of the relationship between Mali and UNESCO and the history of Islam in Mali. Through taking a historical perspective, current events can be seen as part of an ongoing ‘conversation’ about the future of the country. The ICC trial also has wider ramifications for the anthropological study of material culture and cultural heritage as it resists a plural understanding of people’s entanglement with sites and objects and demands instead a return to certainty.     

Averting loss aversion in cultural heritage

According to Daniel Kahneman’s theory of loss aversion in behavioural economics and decision theory, people tend to prefer strongly avoiding losses to acquiring gains of the same value. A recently proposed alternative explanation of the same behaviour is inertia. In this paper, I am heuristically transferring these observations from the realm of economics to the realm of cultural heritage. In the cultural heritage sector of the Western world there has long been a preference for avoiding losses over acquiring gains of the same value. Maintenance of the status quo of cultural heritage is typically perceived as being superior to loss or substitution. However, social anthropologist Tim Ingold recently advocated a view that challenges this preference for loss aversion by considering both people and buildings as something persistent, continuously re-born, and constantly growing and going through a process of ever new creative transformations. By appreciating heritage objects as persistent and continuously being transformed in ongoing processes of change, growth and creation, the preference for loss aversion can be averted and a more dynamic view of cultural heritage be adopted that is better able to work through cases and examples like those presented in this paper.     

2010 cultural heritage legal summary

Abstract

The year 2010 was a relatively quiet one for legal developments with respect to archaeological heritage. Some court decisions that were expected this year, such as that concerning foreign sovereign immunity for artifacts on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, did not materialize, while other disputes remain on appeal, such as that involving the disposition of 500,000 gold and silver coins taken from an early 19th century Spanish shipwreck by Odyssey Marine. One of the most closely watched cases, the trial in Italy of the former J. Paul Getty Museum curator, Marion True, ended inconclusively when time ran out for the prosecution. Nonetheless, recovery and restitution of cultural objects that were brought illegally into the United States continued, as did controversies concerning the bilateral agreements concluded between the United States and other nations, pursuant to the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, the United States' legislation implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The following review focuses on legal developments primarily in the United States, as the United States participates in international treaty regimes to protect cultural heritage.     

Regional cultural heritage versus national heritage in Scania's disputed national landscape

This article argues that the official landscape heritage in Sweden is formed in an interplay between regional and national discourses, and that the national ideology during the last century has promoted the preservation of stereotyped landscapes that partly ignores the conditions under which these landscapes were actually formed. This tends to naturalise the landscape, often cleansing it of human action and thereby generating a notion of an innate and given national landscape. To illustrate this, the landscape of the province of Skåne in southernmost Sweden is discussed from a heritage perspective. This province (which was Danish up to 1658) has a landscape characterised by its openness and contrasting to the emblematic Swedish cultural landscape of forests and small hamlets. A conclusion is that Skåne's landscape heritage runs the risk of being alienated when it is valued from a national criterion, and that a critical questioning of official heritage practice is therefore needed.     

The securitisation of cultural heritage

ABSTRACT

It is not a novelty for art to come under attack: cultural heritage has always been endangered by wars, conflicts and political violence. Since the last century, the international community has started reacting, moved by the concern that these threatened monuments be protected. Lately, cultural heritage can be seen to undergo a veritable crescendo from politicisation to criminalisation and securitisation. Accordingly, this article seeks to analyse the pathway that characterises the international protection of cultural heritage in crisis-torn contexts, employing a discursive lens and mapping the narrative threads that the main international actors have constructed in reaction to recent attacks on archaeological sites (i.e. Palmyra) and historical artefacts, especially in the Middle East (namely Syria and Iraq). After having traced this process, we will offer a tentative explanation of what we consider a process of securitising an under-researched field (i.e. cultural heritage).     

中国建筑遗产再认识

中国仿生的构架体系建筑,在历史早期就已传播到邻近的东亚国家,从而形成了一个东方建筑体系。18世纪以来,又影响到欧洲,与西方新材料、新技术相结合,使摩天楼得以矗立;中国《老子》的空间学说,引起世界"近代建筑革命";中国的陶制砌块用植物油处理的原理,促成抗酸、碱的"有、无机相结合"的建材理论,被誉为世界"建材革命"。直至今日,不同于西方"花园"(ga rden)和"林园"(pa r k)的中国人为环境与自然环境相融合的园林原理,促成了现代景观学;中国的精神与物质统一功能场效应的风水学说,已经在日、韩、美、德、法等西方国家兴起。作为全人类的财富——中国建筑遗产,将继续对人类生存环境的建设做出贡献。     

Degraded towns in Poland as cultural heritage

This paper discusses how the concept of cultural heritage is currently used in relation to the so-called degraded towns (i.e. deprived of their urban status) in Poland. It shows the role of heritagisation in the process of restitution of urban status, and addresses the effects of the ongoing revitalisation of degraded towns in order to restore their lost urban glory. I argue that the Polish understanding of urbanity is ambiguous, muddling formality with cultural connotations. I address how such convolution both rewrites history and affects modernity by the imposition of values and foreclosures. I also discuss how alterations to the built environment made in the name of cultural heritage (revitalisation) are often conducted with disregard to identity, authenticity and historical hybridity, and how the introduction of ‘history’ into a modern arena affects the local society. I conclude that considering degraded towns as a special form of cultural heritage is a new construction, where coupling of the disconnected dimensions of the Polish understanding of urbanity becomes even more apparent. I stress that this field is neither sufficiently differentiated nor problematised, and that cultural heritage relating to degraded towns is often taken for granted.     

区域东亚与知识“东亚”

"东亚"既是一个空间性概念——即地理性、地域性的概念,又是一个时间性的概念——即历史性的和意识形态的概念。现代性的介入,使得"东亚"成为一个需要不断重新界定和检验的概念。区域东亚是知识"东亚"的理解和阐释对象,知识"东亚"是区域东亚在理论和知识上的抽象和提升。区域东亚在结构上具有封闭性、多元性的特征,在功能上又具有流变性和开放性的特征。知识"东亚"的命题集中反映了知识界的"中心-边缘"结构、各种知识背后的意识形态竞争和权力诉求。现代性和东亚的关系并不是一种单向度的"冲击-回应"关系,而是一种双向的相互建构的共生关系。     

Learning from cultural engagements in community-based heritage scholarship

This article explores the intellectual and methodological values of cross-cultural and institutional engagements in community-based heritage initiatives, specifically a cultural exchange and university training program. The initiatives were situated in the Belizean villages of Crooked Tree and Biscayne. The cultural exchange took place between people of African Kriol and Mopan Maya descent who shared histories of engagements with archaeologists and community efforts to manage local environmental and cultural heritage resources. The university training example highlights engagements in an international community-based public history field experience. By discussing these case-studies and situating them in relevant disciplinary literatures, I demonstrate how interactions between groups embedded in community-based heritage initiatives provide valuable learning opportunities for a range of stakeholders and contribute to heritage scholarship. I discuss considerations in implementing cultural exchanges, share details about the process and results of community, academic, and institutional engagements in heritage projects in Belize, and conclude with some learned lessons about community-based heritage scholarship.     

满族刺绣与非物质文化遗产的保护

本文通过概括介绍满族刺绣的发展与现状,提出保护满族刺绣的重要性,同时援引国内外传统文化保护的成功案例,进而归纳出具体的保护原则与方法.满族刺绣工艺的代表项目是国家级和省级非物质文化遗产,对其保护和利用的研究是我省非物质文化遗产保护工作研究中的重要个案.     

Indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage

Abstract

This paper discusses indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage, using the example of rights to indigenous human remains, held by institutions, universities, scientific centres and museums. It addresses international developments in indigenous cultural policy at the United Nations and the European Union, with specific reference to Australia and the United Kingdom. It also outlines issues relating to indigenous peoples' collective rights, free, prior and informed consent, ownership of indigenous human remains and the issue of benefit sharing and sustainable justice. There are now several international declarations, conventions and policies in place to assist indigenous people in gaining some form of control and protection over their heritage, however, these international instruments are often unco-ordinated and lacking in any enforcement mechanisms and they hold little sway with those who retain indigenous human remains against the wishes of descendant communities.