Cultural Heritage Products Research Articles

Cultural Heritage and Associations in France: Reflections on a Ground-Breaking Investigation, Twenty Years On

This interview was carried out to mark the approaching twentieth anniversary of what has become a seminal text within French heritage studies: Le Patrimoine saisi par les associations (Heritage in the Hands of Associations). Ahead of its time, this work by the French sociologists Hervé Glevarec and Guy Saez shed light on a number of important yet little-studied dynamics relating to the interactions between the field of heritage and associations in France. Today many of the aspects they outlined (the role of the associative sector in expanding the notion of heritage in France; opening up of the category of heritage to include customs, rituals, know-how and memories; the interest in following the biographical trajectories of heritage actors) have become a common part of heritage making and a focus of heritage studies around the world. Somewhat surprisingly, there has been very little intellectual follow-up of Glevarec and Saez’ pioneering work. As well as detailing the social context that led to the study and underlining some of the key findings, in the interview Glévarec and Saez point to some significant evolutions in political, intellectual and moral paradigms affecting contemporary cultural heritage production. Accordingly, the interview demonstrates the historical value of ethnographic and sociological studies which, when compared with more recent research, can help chart the extent of transformations of a social field over time.

Walking through Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Little Africa’: places and contested borders

Abstract At the turn of the twenty-first century, the urban renewal project in Rio de Janeiro’s port region emphasized the macroscopic scale of road building and projects designed for the future. In parallel, the production of localities and cultural heritage have often sought to adapt to the impacts of urban transformation. Guided tours fostering the idea of ‘African heritage’ construct places of historical and contemporary significance, reinterpreting their wider connections with people and places and their disputed borders. In this context, ‘Little Africa’ involves the production of a ‘place’ designed locally by cultural associations that promote walking tours in an attempt to fix routes that either adapt to or subvert times and spaces.

Mathematical Modeling of Cultural Identity on Consumption Intentions of Intangible Cultural Heritage Products of Martial Arts

Mathematical Modeling of Cultural Identity on Consumption Intentions of Intangible Cultural Heritage Products of Martial Arts

Development and Design of Folk Arts Intangible Cultural Heritage Products with Laser Scanning Microscope

Development and Design of Folk Arts Intangible Cultural Heritage Products with Laser Scanning Microscope

Cultural Heritage Literacy of The Students of Information Management: The Case of Hacettepe University

Protection of cultural heritage products in a sustainable manner requires the information concerning those products to be accessible, usable and shareable. Even the skills of cultural heritage literacy, which form the basis of this process, are important for everyone, these skills are much more necessary for information professionals who have the responsibility to provide service in the area of cultural heritage. Evaluating cultural heritage literacy skills of information professional candidates, carries a great importance in order to understand whether they have adequate qualification while serving as a professional and to determine necessary training subjects they need. In this study, it is aimed to determine the current situation of the students of Hacettepe University Department of Information Management on cultural heritage literacy. For this purpose, a questionnaire of 28-question was sent to 356 undergraduate students via e-mail in 2018-2019 Spring Semester. 142 students answered to whole questionnaire. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and a chi-square test. Findings showed that most of the participants have efficient cultural heritage literacy skills, and they have dominant competences in recognizing their information necessities regarding cultural heritage and sharing their cultural heritage information. It is considered beneficial especially for information professionals who have functions of protecting and transferring cultural heritage to the next generations, to add courses or course contents directly related to cultural heritage literacy to undergraduate programs of Information and Record Management Departments.

Communicating Cultural Values in Shaping City Images through the Museum of Batik Pekalongan, Indonesia

The purpose of this study are firstly, to find out what is the history of the batik (a traditional textile originating from the island of Java) in Pekalongan City, Indonesia and what cultural values are contained in the batik design of the archipelago exhibited in the batik museum in Pekalongan. Secondly, to find out how the cultural values contained in batik are communicated to the community. Thirdly, how the museum made an efforts in helping preserve batik as a product of cultural heritage to strengthen the city image of Pekalongan City as the World’s City of Batik. The results of this study indicate that the cultural values contained in batik patterns are strongly influenced by the culture of migrants who arrived in the city of Pekalongan. Pekalongan as a coastal city on the north coast of Java is very easily accessed by migrants from various ethnic groups such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and even Dutch. They came to Pekalongan with the aim to trade, religion propaganda, even to war. Batik Museum in Pekalongan also plays an active role in socializing the history and values contained in each batik displayed by considering the arrangement of display space and organizing events such as fashion shows or short course to make batik for teenagers.

Dijital Küratörlük: Kavramsal Bir Değerlendirme

“Dünya dijitalleşiyor” fenomeni günümüzde bilginin yönetsel süreçleriyle ilgili her aşamasını derinden etkilemektedir. Dijitalleşen dünyada bilgi profesyonellerinden beklenen, geleneksel mesleki işlevlerinden bilginin koruyucusu olma durumunu, dijital bilgilerin kalıcı olarak korunması ve yeniden kullanımı için de gerçekleştirmeleridir. Bu beklentiyi karşılayan uygulamalar dijital küratörlük süreçleriyle sağlanmaktadır. Yaşam döngüsü boyunca dijital verilerin muhafazasını, erişilebilir olmasını, yeniden kullanılmasını ve değerinin korunmasını sağlayan dijital küratörlük, dijital dünyanın anlamlı veri dağlarının gelecekte de yaşatılmasını öngören çabaları içermektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, bilimsel ya da kültürel miras ürünlerine ilişkin veri yaratma çabalarını tekrarlayan süreçlerden arındıran dijital küratörlük kavramını, temel özellikleri ve dijital bilgi yönetimi süreçleriyle olan ilgisi bağlamında değerlendirmektir. Çalışmanın, dijital küratörlük becerilerinin mesleki eğitim süreçlerine adaptasyonuna dikkat çekmesi ve konuya ilişkin literatüre katkı sağlaması beklenmektedir.

Stakeholders of Cultural Heritage as Responsible Institutional Tourism Product Management Agents

Increased competition in tourist destinations and the recent economic crisis directly affect various institutions that manage cultural heritage. In the case of museums, we may need to reflect more on the challenges that stem from the new financial and social situation for their management. The long-term analysis of relationships with stakeholders is a more reliable way of achieving stability to counteract the effects of income reduction. This study involved conducting interviews with directors of four museums, one for each existing management model, contrasting with direct observation and unstructured interviews conducted in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands (Spain). The data obtained were analyzed with UCINET (a software package for analyzing social network data), to determine relationship indicators. The research suggests that stakeholder networks, as a competitive advantage in cultural institutions, play an important role in creating or improving cultural heritage products, as well as helping to develop responsible tourism.

DIAGNOSIS OR AUTO DIAGNOSIS? ENHANCING CONSERVATION PRACTICES OF BUILT CULTURAL HERITAGE. CASE OF STUDY BENIGNO MALO, ECUADOR

Abstract. The acknowledgment that cultural heritage products are repositories of remarkable cultural values has brought the need for guaranteeing their intergenerational transmission. It has given the reason for the existence of conservation as a discipline. In the last two decades, important shifts have taken place regarding conservation practices. Those practices have moved from an object-centered approach, towards a values-based approach. It implies conservation does not focus solely on guaranteeing the physical permanence of a cultural product but ensuring the maximum transfer of its heritage values. Progressively, conservation is being understood more as a collective dialogue process than a technical issue. This recognition highlights the crucial role that a proper diagnosis might play to guide on this complex process. In this regard, the present work aims to reveal from the socio-economic perspective, the aspects that might influence on the conservation process based on the case of study of the Benigno Malo High school, a heritage asset located in Cuenca World Heritage City, Ecuador. In doing so, it explores the socio-economic dynamics around the cultural heritage asset itself, the territory to which it belongs, and the actors that might influence on its conservation process. But even more, it concludes reflecting around the complementarities and divergences between the notions of diagnosis and autodiagnosis and their contribution for improving current conservation practices.

‘Building on the Power of the Past’ the production and politics of heritage on a Dutch Caribbean Island

ABSTRACT Lying off the coast of Venezuela in a prime ‘sun, sea, and sand’ location, Curaçao is a popular tourist destination with a complex past. Since its colonisation by the Dutch in 1634, it has seen slavery, abolition, a civil rights movement, industrialisation, and severe environmental damage. All the while it has served as an exotic escape for wealthy travellers. In 2010, a high-profile European jazz festival came to the island and drew a large, international crowd. The success of this first Curaçao North Sea Jazz Festival (CNSJF) sparked a new commercial strategy by the Curaçao Tourist Board to grow the industry and in recent years, more events began to spring up on the island. One of these was Punda Jazz Vibes, which is a free event run by local residents (by contrast, CNSJF tickets cost $195 per night). This paper examines the discourses that surround and connect these events, with special focus on the production and mediation of cultural heritage in the wider tourism infrastructure that supports them. We demonstrate the political nature of heritage production on Curaçao and show how the festivals are implicated in a long history of colonial and postcolonial exploitation, thus questioning the social impact of the tourism industry at large.

Digital Transformations and Musical Education on the Traditions of Folk Instrumental Culture

The paper presents the peculiarities of introduction of digital technologies in musical education on traditions of folk instrumental culture, the potentials of building an educational process on the basis of centuries-old traditions of the Russian people, its richest cultural heritage, in particular, folk art culture. Functions of folk art culture are shown and analyzed. The core viewpoint of the paper is showing the importance of knowledge and respect for own culture as a guarantor of self-preservation of the ethnic group, strengthening of social self-awareness, formation of tolerant relationships and relationships with other ethnic groups. The importance of folk instruments in children's musical education is considered. The possibilities of solving the problem of archiving of cultural heritage products and providing them with full access are explored. Modern opportunities of distance education and use of digital technology resources in music education are demonstrated. Keywords: Folk Art Culture, Cultural Heritage, Traditions of Folk Instrumental Culture, Translation of Cultural Values, Digital Technologies, Information Environment, Distance Education

Open Access to Digitized Cultural Heritage: A Model Proposal for Turkey

Küreselleşmenin etkisiyle homojenleşen kültürel değerler, ulusları yerel kültürlerini kaybetme riskiyle karşı karşıya bırakmıştır. Kültür varlıklarının korunmasına ve ait olduğu toplumla birlikte tanınmasına ilişkin duyarlılık, kültürel miras ürünlerini sürdürülebilir bir anlayışla koruma ve kitlesel düzeyde erişilebilir kılma çabalarını artırmıştır. Kültürel miras ürünlerine engelsiz erişim kütüphane, arşiv ve müze gibi kültürel bellek kurumlarının dijital kapılarını aralamaları ve web üzerindeki görünürlüklerini artırmalarıyla sağlanabilir. Bu çalışmanın amacı -Türkiye örneğinde- dijitalleştirilen kültürel mirasa açık erişim sağlanmasına öncülük edecek bir model önermektir. Kültürel mirasa açık erişimin yasal, teknik, idari ve mali süreçlerine rehberlik etmesi beklenen modelin, kültürel miras ürünlerinin evrensel düzeyde keşfedilmesine, bireysel ve toplumsal bağlamda yaratıcılığın gelişmesine ve kültürel miras yönetiminde standart yaklaşımların benimsenmesine de katkı sağlayacağı düşünülmektedir.

Urban tourism via dispossession of oeuvres

Most of the anthropology of tourism has focused either on authenticity or on the commoditization of culture. Furthermore, tourism has been looked at as a service sector and, at most, as an urban strategy. Few authors have investigated the organization of (in)formal labor in the tourism industry outside the wage form. I address this gap by looking at the living and dead labor that the production of cultural heritage is about. I argue that the tourism industry transforms long-labored spaces and existing collective use values into commodities. After illustrating this argument with sketches from the Ciutat de Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain), I conclude that the relation between the dead labor and the living labor that produce heritage determines people’s differential access to its commoditized outcome.

MODERNIZATION OF THE DEMAND AND SUPPLY SIDES FOR GASTRONOMIC CULTURAL HERITAGE

Gastronomic cultural heritage is part of cultural heritage. Under globalisation, individuals become increasingly interested not only in cultural heritage as a whole but also in its components, e.g. gastronomic heritage. Nowadays individuals are interested in such things as traditional foods, the techniques of preparing the foods and the traditions of consuming them. Individuals wish to see gastronomic traditions not only on a national scale but also a regional and even a local scale. Previous research studies conducted in Latvia focused on the progress of cultural heritage products as value and the introduction of such products by businesses in the rural areas of Latvia. Scientific cooperation opened up opportunities to study the phenomenon of a wider geographical space covering four countries – Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia. The aim of this research stage: to identify an impact of information on the demand-supply balance of gastronomic heritage as a product in the market. The method of the research: a sociological survey (n = 1000 from Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia; 285 men and 715 women) that was carried out during 2016. Despite the fact that the sample groups were not representative (did not reflect the views of the entire population), the obtained data and results of this analysis provided insight into the cultural issues under today’s circumstances through the population’s views. The results of the study strengthen the need for the modernization of the information system in order to promote rural viability.

La inmaterialidad y normatividad del patrimonio cultural

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la producción social del patrimonio cultural inmaterial como un campo que es atravesado por lógicas normativas. En este sentido, se busca abordar el patrimonio cultural inmaterial como un campo (en los términos de Bourdieu) y analizarlo a la luz de los aportes de la antropología para así poder llevar a cabo una lectura que vuelva visible la heterogeneidad omnipresente de prácticas, ideas jurídicas, definiciones, conductas y normas. Para ello se recuperarán algunas de las normativas vigentes -internacionales y nacionales- para comprender el conjunto de las disputas que refuerzan o limitan en cada contexto la vigencia del mismo, así como sus múltiples interpretaciones.

Cultural Heritage on China’s 21st-century Maritime Silk Road

This article suggests that Chinese scholars in Guangdong, through historical work endorsed or sponsored by their government, justify the inclusion of Southeast Asian nations in the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) initiative. In doing so, they seek to add the MSR to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List. By exploring how historians and officials adhere to the expectations of the Chinese state and UNESCO in highlighting Guangdong’s role in the 21st-century MSR initiative, the article examines the production of cultural heritage at the local level in contemporary China.

Making sense: Experiential engagements with ethnographic photographs

This article examines the role of embodied and performative knowledge in the museum environment, with a particular focus on ethnographic photographs. The study is based on the return of several hundred ethnographic photographs from the Sarawak Museum to Indigenous communities in rural Malaysia, where they had been taken by museum photographers from the early 1950s onwards. Aside from the oral narratives that emerged during the discussions and interviews, contextual knowledge was provided in embodied form. The return of the photographs to people in the source communities prompted the re-enactment of activities, re-telling of stories and production of cultural heritage to which the photographs referred. Such embodied knowledge, defined as knowledge preserved through performance and embodied activities, relates to the multi-vocal narratives about objects that museums are increasingly trying to include in their exhibitions. In this article I argue for a greater and more experimental use of sensory means to convey information about artifacts to museum audiences. Keywords:Ethnographic photographs, Photography, Embodied knowledge, museum archives, Sarawak, Southeast Asia

Visualisation of the “Denouements” in Cypriot Legends as Cultural Heritage: <i>The Mountain/Well/Plain, and the Sea/Lake/Shore Themed Cypriot Legends</i>

Legends as a part of intangible culture are known to provide information on their own culture as well as the perception structure of society. From our perspective, the legends, which can be taken into consideration from that dimension, would allow the interpretation of the personality of society in general through the expression and representation of their ‘consequences’. The aim of this study is to understand the cultural structure over the written legends as a cultural heritage product in addition to illustrate the community perception in the most effective and efficient manner. Therefore, critical text analysis was conducted on the written legends and the representation style of every consequence in each legend was analysed. Additionally, in order to contribute the permanence the legends through illustration, the related scenes of the legends were re-structured with the digital collage technique. A mixed method comprised of “ready material use” by Cubism, “exaggerated style” by Dadaism, “manipulation” by Surrealism and “use of neon colours” of pop-Art in addition to the technique ‘ripped paper texture’ which is developed solely by one of three searchers were used in this study. 96 Cypriot legends given in the written records were analysed and only the “denouements” of the legends related with Mountain/Well/Plain and Sea/Lake/Shore covered. As a result, the common feature of the Cypriot Legends was found as “death” as referred by the “denouements”. In other words, the final ending in the Cypriot Community is associated with death and additionally from the discourses of legends the society was identified as having a “patriarchal “socio-cultural structure.

Touring and Obscuring Poverty: Urban and Rural Cultural-Heritage Tourism

ABSTRACTThis paper explores ways pro-poor political messages in cultural-heritage tourism are expressed by tour operators and differentially received and re-communicated by tourists dependent upon whether the experience is located at the center or periphery of national cultural-heritage brands. Two types of cultural-heritage tourism are compared, urban slum tours and rural performances of tradition. Within these types four examples are reviewed, township tours in South Africa and slum tours in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Maasai tours in Tanzania and Kenya, and Batwa tours in Uganda. Township tours in South Africa and Maasai tours in Kenya and Tanzania are located at the center of authorized forms of national cultural-heritage brands, whereas slum tours in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Batwa tours in Uganda operate at the periphery as alternative, less-authorized, forms of cultural heritage. Through a survey of online advertisements, media reports, and reviews, the paper finds that despite all four examples being framed as pro-poor cultural-heritage tourism by tourism providers, typically only tourists that visited the peripheral examples consumed and re-communicated messages of poverty and political marginalization, whereas visitors to central cultural-heritage products typically framed their reviews in terms of historical and cultural authenticity. By comparing cultural-heritage products central to national cultural-heritage brands with peripheral ones, which are conceptually similar (e.g. pro-poor cultural-heritage tourism) despite other outward differences (e.g. urban versus rural), this paper contributes toward the illumination of an aspect of the cultural work of heritage tourism regarding the creation and maintenance, and ability to contest cultural identities.

No two houses of the holy

Using the Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibition as a case study, this article offers one possible answer to the question: what is needed for popular music to become cultural heritage? It looks at how the exhibition’s use of material culture and its relation to intangible culture provide opportunities for audience engagement and establish the exhibition as a site for the production of cultural heritage. Drawing upon work done in both heritage and popular music studies, I argue that the exhibition thesis, its design and the integration of participatory opportunities create a congregant space, one in which heritage’s characteristic operation of establishing a relationship between present and past in order to facilitate inheritance is realized in a manner that offers a dynamic and variable image of membership.