Preface

Abstract

When UNESCO adopted the "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore" in 1989, a new concept was articulated in the context of international cultural policy (Kurin 2001). The understanding of cultural heritage The Aims of the Vigoni ConferencesThe starting point for three international and interdisciplinary conferences held at Villa Vigoni in 2010, 2011 and 2012 was the circulation of the concepts of community and participation, their entanglement with notions of territoriality, and different political and social fields concerned with matters of cultural heritage. How and by whom were these concepts interpreted and re-interpreted, and what effects did they bring forth in their implementation? What impact, rhetorically and practically, was wielded by these terms, and what kinds of discursive formations did they bring forth? How do actors from local to national levels interpret this new component of the heritage regime, and how do actors within heritage-granting national and international bodies work it into their cultural and political agency? Which new relationships and networks unfold within the negotiation processes between different representatives of communities and those actors who think and act within UNESCO's "professional heritage enterprise" (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004: 55). What is the role of experts and expertise, indeed, what counts as expertise and when is scientific knowledge expertise and when is it partisan, supportive matter in the nomination process of the future (in)tangible heritage of humankind? How do Community, Participation and Territory from a Legal PerspectiveThe critical approaches of disciplines working and arguing ethnographically are only one discursive contribution in heritage implementation. The Vigoni program sought explicitly to analyze the participation paradigm within heritage making from an interdisciplinary perspective. In such an arrangement, interpretive perspectives confront the more normative approaches, which are, generally, also those drawn on by state and local bureaucracies in the implementation of heritage conventions. Legal expertise is, after all, what a polity draws on to explain and, in the process, contribute to the development and implementation of guidelines for any new legislation. Within the Vigoni conferences, we sought to understand the inner, discipli-***** Christoph Brumann differentiated between heritage believers, heritage atheists and heritage agnostics in an earlier article (2014), and the Vigoni meetings brought together representatives of these different groups. Several papers in this volume are examples of academic engagement in heritage making and in heritage policy making, and provide evidence of a scholarly, multidisciplinary "will to improve" (Li 2007). The tension between personal convictions, local and professional engagement as experts, and scientific analysis are not easy for some authors to bridge. The contributions of this volume also constitute further extensions of the UNESCO heritage assemblage. The materi...

‘Fertility’ and the Carnival 2: Popular Frazerism and the Reconfiguration of Tradition in Europe Today

“… 15 The expression ʽcultural intimacyʼ is used in the sense made common in anthropological studies by Michael Herzfeld: ʽthe recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common socialityʼ (Herzfeld 1997 , 3). Similar cases in which the UNESCO nomination or list inclusion gave rise, in certain segments of the local community and for varying motivations, to criticism, resistance, or even refusal are reported in Bendix et al ( 2009 ), Brumann ( 2013 ), Fournier and Bortolotto ( 2011 ), Kuutma et al ( 2007 ), and in several papers published in Adell et al ( 2015 ). …”

“… 17 Here I refer not only to schools, museums, and national or even transnational bureaux and agencies (like UNESCO) dealing with cultural heritage and the politics of culture in general, with their enormous power of implementing top-down social policies (as with Hlinsko), but also to the more community-level institutions, like cultural associations (as with Castelnuovo). The literature on UNESCO and other agencies dealing with culture and heritage is very rich (see, among many others, Adell et al 2015 ; Akagawa and Smith 2009 ; Brumann 2014 ; Hemme, Tauschek, and Bendix 2013 ; Palumbo 2006 ; Testa 2016a ). Much less abundant are the works on the role of cultural associations in shaping knowledge, ideas, and poetics of tradition and heritage, especially in small, rural contexts.…”