Abstract
Abstract This article studies the political imperatives initiated by the UNESCO-related normative instruments, and the emergent terms of engagement in the dynamics of collaborative participation, both on scholarly and community level. The authors share participatory experience and expertise in the field of intangible cultural heritage in policy-making and research, with particular interest in the aftermath of UNESCO ICH-labelling and list inscriptions. We reflect at first critically upon the progress and stance of decisions taken as well as the international discursive framework and debates where we have participated. We likewise contemplate the collaborative role of experts in the intangible heritage framework. In our comparative case study into the impact on local heritage processes in the Baltics, the post-nomination circumstance has generated novel community-driven and negotiated collaborative efforts. Both the Seto community in Estonia and the Suiti community in Latvia have found diverse ways of using heritage resources for their own goals, but also in their continued creative collaboration where a growing self-esteem proves to be a solid basis. This investigation links community participation to the issue of agency, and its creative capacity to constitute and reconstitute with a substantial effect of generating action. We have discerned various moments of empowerment and creativity in local responses to transformational social and economic processes. Our research results foreground the functional capacity of creative collaboration as agency of change, where innovation and right to hybridity become enabling qualities.
Highlights
This paper proposes a comparative study of political imperatives of community involvement that are devised by the authorised heritage discourse and the locally refined modes of creative collaborative efforts on the ground
We want to stress that the major goal of this contribution to the volume at hand, stands as follows: to observe the dynamics of collaboration and participation on different levels, involving both expert representation and heritage communities concerned, which immanently concerns the work of disciplinary specialists trained as folklorists or ethnologists, and other fields related to heritage governance, among them legal scholars
At the same time the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) political imperative has played a particular role in Eastern/Central Europe where the past nation-building processes often focused on pre-industrial rural culture, which resulted in establishing a national scale AHD based on previous scholarly practices and imaginaries, when ethnographic and folklore collections served as building blocks for national identity
Summary
This paper proposes a comparative study of political imperatives of community involvement that are devised by the authorised heritage discourse and the locally refined modes of creative collaborative efforts on the ground. We want to stress that the major goal of this contribution to the volume at hand, stands as follows: to observe the dynamics of collaboration and participation on different levels, involving both expert representation and heritage communities concerned, which immanently concerns the work of disciplinary specialists trained as folklorists or ethnologists, and other fields related to heritage governance, among them legal scholars The current authors both have tasted participatory experience in the UNESCO policy-making framework when participating in, and following the relevant international debates, as well as in crafting of heritage governance guidelines. The actual framework of community involvement had to be addressed in the context of establishing and implementing criteria for the 2003 Convention lists, Representative List and the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (hereafter – Urgent Safeguarding List), as well as regarding the promotion of best/good safeguarding practices These criteria were first designed at expert meetings where again the role of folklorists, ethnologists and anthropologists was remarkable.. With our case study we want to present an example of such a collaborative practice and relevant agency construction, even if being related to a quest for a political recognition furthered by community representatives and activists within their respective States
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