How "alive" does Living Heritage ought to be? Webinar on May 11
Webinar series
“Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development”
Organised by
the UNESCO Chair on
Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development
CY Cergy Paris Université
CY Advanced Studies - CY Initiative of Excellence
UMR Héritages: Culture/s, Patrimoine/s, Création/s
Session 5
How "alive" does Living Heritage ought to be?
On evaluating intangible culture in the context of sustainable development
11.05.2023 15.00-17.00 EET
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 948 0422 4217, Passcode: g3HqFM).
Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, Musicology Department University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar & Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Discussant: Kristin Kuutma, UNESCO Chair on Applied Studies of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Graduate School for Culture Studies and Arts, Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu
Intangible or living heritage is always inserted in dynamic cultural processes and in its environmental context. This presentation will focus on the performing arts. From the very beginning of the 2003 Convention specific performance traditions have been inscribed, also together with musical instruments and musical genres.
In contrast to the important musical works of the Western canon of composed pieces, music in many other musical cultures is not primarily "interpreted.” Performing arts rely mostly on a centuries-old existence mainly in live performances and in being reproduced in a meaningful sense. Living musical practice like this is placed in the social context to which it belongs, where it resounds and according to the intellectual framework that it enriches and from which it draws at the same time.
The question about safeguarding the performing arts is therefore mainly related to its “vivid” existence. It is the basis for cultural diversity and goes very much along with questions of biodiversity.
While the process of preserving and promoting performing cultural heritage depends on the degree of vitality of the corresponding practice, the involvement with its specific environment is likewise important. Musical instruments depend mainly on natural resources, repertories make reference to the environment, the seasons along the year give the main temporal structure to rituals and feasts. Therefore, understanding the vitality of the performing arts also goes along with its direct involvement with nature and with processes of sustainable development.
Illustrated with examples from research documentation in Africa and in Europe, some issues of the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage will be discussed within the context of sustainable development.
The webinar series “Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development” brings together the UNESCO Chairs on Intangible Cultural Heritage to tackle the concept of “sustainable development” from the particular perspectives and field of expertise of each Chair (i.e. cultural diversity, education, comparative law, policy and law, applied studies, critical heritage studies etc.). Discussants from various disciplines will join the sessions to decompartmentalise the debate following each presentation.
As a reservoir of experiences developed across different cultures, Intangible Cultural Heritage offers inspiring examples of alternative ways of understanding the relationship with nature and the environment, of healing and taking care of each other, of strengthening social bonds and sustaining livelihoods. In this sense, it can be an agent for change and a resource for imagining alternative ways of living on an endangered planet, what is conventionally referred to as “sustainable development”.
PROGRAM
- 14.10.2022 15.00-17.00 EET
Kristin Kuutma, UNESCO Chair on Applied Studies of Intangible Cultural Heritage,
Graduate School for Culture Studies and Arts, Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu
Ownership and rights: Sustainable Development ideals with inequalities of recognition and resource command
The UNESCO-defined ICH or living heritage domain and its management is fundamentally retrospective, and yet by its political alignment suggests to pursue the UN futurist Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals. This discussion will particularly engage with the goal to reduce inequalities. My critical inquiry unpacks the entangled socioeconomic implications and resource command in relation to designated heritage practices. For minority groups, remarkable sites of meaning emerge that project the dismissed rights for self-determination. Alongside resource command, these reflections analyse inequalities in the politics of recognition. My ethnographic material is based on long-term fieldwork at ICH-related targeted meetings.
Discussant: Cléa Hance, PhD student ENS-Paris Saclay
- 15.12.2022 15.00-17.00 EET
Crsitina Amescua, UNESCO Chair in Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Cultural Diversity, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Ancestral Barter in Contemporary Morelos: sustainable practices that build regional development
There are multiple ways in which sustainable development is understood and enacted at the local and regional levels. I will discuss these issues drawing from a case in a region in central Mexico, where a barter market (along with the commercial market) is held every Sunday in the town of Zacualpan de Amilpas, Morelos, interconnecting people from the highlands and the lowlands of the Popocatepetl Volcano. As the grandparents of their grandparents did, today people from this region collect natural (not cultivated) products from their lands (fruits, vegetables, wood) as well as other products they manufacture (cloths, pottery, coal) and go to Zacualpan to trade what they have for what they need or want. In doing so, they take care of their environment, they create social bonds, exchange knowledge and skills, and ensure a healthier and more varied diet for their families during the week. A wide variety of non-monetary transactions are carried out as negotiations take place in Nahuatl and Spanish to agree on the value of the elements to be exchanged. Barter is a complete example of how Intangible cultural heritage is simultaneously a reservoir of local knowledges and a mechanism to constantly build solid and cohesive communities and groups.
Discussant: Regina Bendix, Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
- 09.02.2023 15.00-17.00 EET
Marc Jacobs, UNESCO Chair on Critical Heritage Studies and Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Vrije Universiteit, Brussel
Context matters.
And CGIs, Respect, Safeguarding ICH, Triple P, Doing Good, Emotions and We Too
The twelve ethical principles for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in the Basic Texts of the 2003 Convention of UNESCO are like ballet: wonderful, but they can hurt if you take them serious and apply them. Dancing ‘en pointe’ and many splits may be needed then: when the going gets tough, will the tough get going for ballet/complex and elegant ethics? The dozen is contradictory, aspirational and sometimes extreme. The set of ethical principles tries to capture many tensions, including those yielded by instruments of glocal ethics in the UN family, like the sustainable development goals, but also by global woke waves or activism. There is still a big part lacking of what was promised in 10.COM 15.A. But will the diplomatic experts in the Intergovernmental Committee, the Living Heritage Entity and savvy activists cultivate the subtle tools, procedures and platforms now they have tasted the power of delisting items of intangible cultural heritage to set examples, address traumas and de/recontextualize? Is unsafeguarding ICH by UNESCO now revealing that the 2003 Convention paradigm is part of the long history of trying to deal with and to reform popular culture?
- 30.03.2023 15.00-17.00 EET
Pier Luigi Petrillo, UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Comparative Law, Department of Law and Economics, University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza
What is intangible cultural heritage from a legal point of view? What are the legal instruments for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage? From the perspective of international law, how does UNESCO protect such heritages? and what effect has the 2003 UNESCO Convention had, from a legal perspective, on domestic legal systems?
The talk will attempt to answer these questions by examining 3 points:
- the legal definition of intangible cultural heritage and examination of the 2003 UNESCO Convention
- the legal protection of ICH in some jurisdictions (such as, for example, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Burkina Faso) before the 2003 UNESCO Convention
- the legal protection of ICH after the 2003 Convention and analysis of the effects produced
The talk will therefore show what the practical consequences of the 2003 UNESCO Convention have been on some national legislations by highlighting how there are different levels of protection today.
Discussant: Anita Vaivade, UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage Policy and Law, Latvian Academy of Culture
- 11.05.2023 15.00-17.00 EET
Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, Musicology Department University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar & Friedrich Schiller University Jena
How "alive" does Living Heritage ought to be?
On evaluating intangible culture in the context of sustainable development
Discussant: Kristin Kuutma, UNESCO Chair on Applied Studies of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Graduate School for Culture Studies and Arts, Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu
- 06.06.2023 15.00-17.00 EET
Students session: presentation of ongoing PhD and MA research and discussion
Students interested in presenting their research results, do not hesitate to contact Chiara Bortolotto, holder of the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development (chiara.bortolotto@cyu.fr).
