Awkward Relations and Universal Aspirations: Common Global Heritage in Ghana

Abstract

In this article, I investigate some of the artifacts that were involved in the reconstruction of a so‐called common cultural heritage site, a collaboration between the University of Ghana and the National Museum of Denmark. The ambition is to explore how these locally used artifacts evoked universal aspirations and thereby to discuss how the emergence of global heritage through different collaborative practices may be studied. Inspired by the work of Anna Tsing, I discuss the analytical possibilities of studying global heritage as “zones of awkward engagements”. I argue that instead of analyzing cultural heritage as a series of compromises, it is fruitful, at least analytically, to examine the awkwardness within the object of study—the creation of a cultural heritage site—as a continuous organization of parts and wholes, artifacts and words, the local and the global, in which a variety of stakeholders offer different universal aspirations.