Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property

The working group provides an overview of recent and future events and publications that members are involved in or have contributed to.

The SIEF Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property was established at the 2008 Derry Congress, to address the growing interest in the field of cultural heritage, its symbolic and economic power, as well as contingent political implications. Its interests and activities encompass issues of heritage policy, theory, and practice. Any SIEF member is welcome to join our working group. To join, send an email to Carley Williams and Robert Baron, and make sure to register for the Working Group mailing list online.

1st Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies Central and Eastern European Chapter

29th-30th November 2023; Ljubljana, Slovenia

CHP members are as busy as ever participating in other conferences and authoring publications. Heritage on the Margins? Central and Eastern European Perspectives was the provocative theme of the 1st Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Chapter, which occurred at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences (ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) on November 29–30, 2023. It was organised by the interdisciplinary research group Heritage on the Margins and the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The conference addressed themes of marginality vs. centrality, the profound impacts of World Wars I and II, displacements of people, and the enduring legacies of socialism and post-socialism on heritage processes.

It featured keynote speakers David C. Harvey from Aarhus University (Denmark), and our CFP board member Alessandro Testa from Charles University (Czech Republic), who presented insights into the dynamic heritage-borders complexes and negotiations among diverse heritage actors. A special highlight was the roundtable discussion “Pain, but shame no more” following the screening of the documentary "The Museum of Madness," which sparked an engaging debate on the heritagization of former psychiatric institutions.

Case studies illustrated the fluid and socially constructed nature of what is deemed worthy of preservation as heritage. The discussions underscored the importance of moving beyond national frameworks, revealing the mechanisms by which certain narratives are excluded from heritage processes and exploring non-discursive practices of remembering. The conference showcased the pivotal role that Central and Eastern Europe can play in understanding the discontinuous sequence of past heritage processes, emphasising the region's central role due to its dissonant heritage of socialism.

 

1st Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Chapter, November 2023. Photo: Marko Zaplatil.

Conference “Appropriations and Instrumentalizations: Intangible Cultural Heritage in Rural Heritage”

20th-22th March 2023; Bamberg, Germany

Problematic heritage was examined in the conference Appropriations and Instrumentalizations – Intangible Cultural Heritage in Rural Heritage held in the World Heritage city of Bamberg, Germany, 20–22 March. It included a presentation by CFP board member Helmut Groschwitz and Annette Schneider-Reinhardt on ‘UNESCO, Mythologische Schule und Neue Rechte – Zum Umgang mit einem heiklen Erbe’ (‘UNESCO, the Mythological School and the New Right – coping with a difficult heritage’). They discussed how the interpretations of the ‘mythological school’, i.e. statements that festivals, customs or places are ‘actually’ pagan, create points of reference for the New Right. Contending that Germany’s support of bearer groups through its national implementation procedure of the ICH Convention is inadequate, Groschwitz and Schneider-Reinhardt asked how the heritage communities can be helped in this problematic field.

Conference “Übersehen, vergessen, stillgestellt? Zur Latenz kulturellen Erbes”

9th-10th April 2023; Leipzig, Germany

A conference held 9–10 April 2023 in Leipzig, Übersehen, vergessen, stillgestellt? Zur Latenz kulturellen Erbes (Overlooked, forgotten, silenced? On the latency of cultural heritage) dealt with the phase before or alongside heritagization.

Official opening of the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Public and Global Governance

The members of the working group are excited that the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Public and Global Governance was established at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw on 14 March 2024. More information: see below (“ICH and UNESCO”).

Publication of Special Issue Winter 2024 Journal of American Folklore “Folklore, Heritage and the Public Sphere”

The Winter 2024 special issue of the Journal of American Folklore on Folklore, Heritage and the Public Sphere included contributions by a number of SIEF members. This special issue, which draws from a 2021 webinar, includes six articles along with salon discussions on the webinar topics which included 85 participants from 11 different countries. The issue explored the negotiation of power dynamics among heritage stakeholders, integrating intangible and tangible heritage with environmental sustainability, interventions to sustain traditions through heritage productions, transformations of form, content, and cultural meanings as cultural practices are recontextualized through heritage, the coalescence of local knowledge and academic expertise in community collaborations and how heritage can be used to advance social justice as well as how it is used divisively as an instrument of oppression. Articles in the issue included: ‘Folklore and Cultural Heritage: Reflecting on Change’, by Valdimar Tr. Hafstein; ‘Won’t You Help to Sing These Songs of Freedom? Sharing Authority, Co-curation, and Supporting Community-Driven Heritage Work’, by Diana Baird N’Diaye; ‘Towards Sustainable Visits’, by Owe Ronström; ‘Culinary Tourism as Public Folklore: Heritage in Negotiating Competitiveness and Sustainability’, by Lucy M. Long; ‘Folklife, Heritage, and the Environment: A Critique of Natural Capital, Ecosystem Services, and Settler Ecology’, by Jeff Todd Titon; and ‘Anticipatory Heritage’, by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Salon discussion topics included ‘Mutual Engagement, Co-Creation, and Yielding Authority for Representation: Strategies and Practices’; ‘Public Folklore, Heritage and Social Justice’; ‘Tourism through Folklore: Challenges and Opportunities’; ‘Sustainabilities and Anticipatory Heritage’.

Intergovernmental Committee Meeting of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage

3rd -9th December 2023; Kasane, Botswana

Many SIEF members attended the 18th annual Intergovernmental Committee Meeting (18.COM) of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Culture Heritage, held 3–9 December in Kasane, Botswana. As an accredited NGO to the Convention, SIEF is a member of the ICH NGO Forum. The Forum organized a symposium and poster presentations on 3 December which explored the past, present and future of safeguarding collaborations involving multiple stakeholders. Presentations featured NGOs discussing their collaborations with other NGOs, governments, and the private sector. During the Forum’s meetings in Botswana, SIEF’s representative on the Executive Board of the Forum, Robert Baron, was elected its President for 2024.

You can see the recordings and outcomes of the Intergovernmental Committee meeting online. The biennial meeting of the ICH General Assembly will be held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, 11–13 June 2024. Any SIEF member can register to attend the General Assembly and the next Intergovernmental meeting, which will be held in Asuncion, Paraguay, 1–7 December. Registration forms for both meetings will appear at least a month in advance of the meeting on the UNESCO ICH website.

The ICH NGO Forum is once again publishing its newsletter and has an active Facebook group, ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage and Civil Society’ and LinkedIn group, ‘ICH NGO Forum’.