Subproject B

Cultural heritage, art and visual performances in non-western societies

​Project leader: Irene Maffi, Professor

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Because of its inherent sensorial and aesthetic components, visual culture is a powerful tool employed by social actors to immediately convey complex meanings. Visual components of non- Western societies have attracted the attention of cultural anthropologists since the beginning of the ethnographic practice: descriptions of rituals, festivities, clothes, ornaments, tools and bizarre objects, classified as primitive art, pagan idols or curiosities can be found in the works of the founding fathers of anthropology. At the same time, the first ethnographic collections were created in order to preserve and study the “culture” and “traditions” of the other, particularly the non-Western peoples living mainly in thecolonial domains. More recently during the second half of the twentieth century the explosion of culturalheritage practices all over the world, the trend towards the museumification of each history, the processesof nation building and the emergence of nativist movements in numerous post-colonial states have created a new field of study for anthropology (Clifford 1988, Dakhlia et al. 2006, Handler 1988, Herzfeld 1991, Karp and Levine 1991). Non-western cultural heritage notions and practices, various forms of artistic creations, and more broadly processes of production of visual culture, such as folkloric festivals, ‘traditional’ handicraft, tourist or ‘airport’ art are today considered central topics (Canclini 1990, Clifford 1988, 1997, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, Rowan and Baram 2004, Simpson 1996). All these phenomena have been variously classified as tangible and intangible cultural heritage by local, national and international agencies. The two labels of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, legitimized by UNESCO, a Western-dominated institution, include numerous and complex cultural processes taking place at various level and involving numerous actors, such as international agencies, nation states, municipalities, local communities, minorities, etc. . Contemporary forms of cultural heritage practices in non-western societies can be better understood by taking into consideration not only present practices but also their genealogy during the colonial period, which for many countries coincided with the beginning of modernity, a concept which in the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century was synonymous of the Western paradigm of modernity (Chakrabarty 2000). Indeed, the notion and practices of cultural heritage are clearly related to the concept’s European roots and global dissemination. Entering non-western societies the concept of cultural heritage interacted with local ideas about the past, its conservation and utilization in the present. The high variance in the reception and adaptation of the notion of cultural heritage provides a means of unraveling the cultural, social and political fabric of the local context (Deeb 2006). This is because significant political, social and cultural dynamics are mobilized in the process of receiving and reshaping exogenous cultural paradigms conveying new aesthetic values, new historical visions, new political forms of legitimization as well as new forms of space appropriation (Graburn 1976). The development of modern forms of art and cultural performances, which may appear as completely autonomous domains, are in fact very closely related to the development of the cultural heritage model, insofar as they reflect the development of new visual expressions, new forms of taste and new ways of putting on stage those ‘things’ that are often designated as identity and history (Canclini 1990). Modern visual culture is thus to be considered in relation with the emergence of new ‘social imaginaries’ entailing new notions of society, individuals, public sphere and power.

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