Marilena Alivizatou

This book examines participation as an intellectual and operational frame in safeguarding intangible heritage. Including case studies from the Netherlands, Belgium, Aotearoa New Zealand, Greece, Peru, Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Japan, the book provides an analysis of safeguarding as a museological framework and further investigates safeguarding practices in participatory research, memory-work and cultural transmission. Drawing on conversations about ‘the tyranny of participation’, the book looks into the complexities of participatory projects on the ground, from community research and collecting to the mapping of Indigenous values in environmental conservation and processes of active remembering of ‘difficult intangible heritage’ of forced migration, political violence and mental illness. Cautioning against the uncritical adoption of participation as a universal ethical discourse, Alivizatou argues that the ethics of cosmopolitanism should guide safeguarding practices at an international level.

In this comparative, international study Marilena Alivizatou investigates the relationship between museums and the new concept of “intangible heritage.” She looks at the rise of intangible heritage within the global sphere of UN cultural policy and explores its implications both in terms of international politics and with regard to museological practice and critical theory. Using a grounded ethnographic methodology, Alivizatou examines intangible heritage in the local complexities of museum and heritage work at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, the National Museum of the American Indian, the quai Branly Museum and the Horniman Museum.  This multi-sited, cross-cultural approach highlights key challenges currently faced by cultural institutions worldwide in understanding and presenting living heritage.

The paper draws on debates about digital heritage and further examines the implications in terms of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. Taking i-Treasures, an EU-funded FP7 collaborative research project, as a case in point, it investigates ways in which new information and communication technologies have been used to serve heritage documentation and learning. The main argument unfolds along the themes of inventories, virtual learning and community participation. First, the paper looks at the concept of inventorying by examining digital repositories of cultural expressions and how they ascribe meaning and value to intangible heritage. It then explores how documentation recordings and data are used in virtual learning environments and create online engagements with heritage expressions. The third part examines how digital technologies inform relations between communities and intangible heritage. What are the implications in terms of access and participation to the heritage experience and how does this affect the uses and meanings of intangible heritage by (local and virtual) practicing communities and heritage professionals? By focusing on the i-Treasures web platform, the paper aims to raise questions about how intangible heritage is defined and performed digitally and how this relates to issues of participation in the safeguarding process.

This article examines the educational approaches taken by the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Museums Field School in Lamphun, Thailand, organized by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC). Since 2009, the Field School, which takes place over a period of two weeks, has brought together fifty-five heritage professionals from throughout South East Asia to learn about intangible cultural heritage and its safeguarding. Through classroom lectures and discussions, participants are introduced to both the practical and theoretical aspects of sustaining intangible cultural heritage. Through in situ, community-based exercises, participants are given an opportunity to apply research tools and approaches that encourage building collaborative relationships with local communities, as well as learning about intangible cultural expressions from the perspectives of their practitioners and within their source environments. The Field School also actively promotes critical reflection on the limits and challenges of implementing the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) mandate as they emerge from the field practicum exercise. Such challenges include issues of representation, power relations, and decision-making within the community—complex issues which are left unaddressed in both the 2003 UNESCO ICH Convention and the 2012 Operational Directives.

In October 2003, 28 cultural expressions from around the world were
proclaimed Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, complementing the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. This proclamation has been part of the broader remit of the international organisation to protect the world’s cultural diversity from modernity and globalisation. Inherent in this is an underlying notion of cultural authenticity, implying that certain expressions, which are considered to be endangered and therefore in need of institutional protection, constitute ‘original’ and ‘pure’ manifestations of cultural identity. Taking forward debates on the safeguarding of intangible heritage, this paper examines cultural authenticity in the context of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, the principal cultural organisation, museum and research institution of the Melanesian archipelago. The proclamation of the practice of sandroing (sand drawing) as a masterpiece of intangible heritage, and other heritage interventions taking place in Vanuatu and recorded during fieldwork in 2007, provide an interesting perspective for examining how global cultural initiatives are negotiated by local constituencies. Here, heritage preservation is coupled with calls for development, which invites new ways for thinking about authenticity not according to predefined criteria, but with respect to local understandings.

This article builds on recent discussions on intangible heritage following the adoption of the relevant convention by UNESCO in 2003. The emergence of intangible heritage in the international heritage scene is tied up with fears of cultural homogenization and the need to protect the world's diversity. For a number of critics, however, UNESCO's normative framework raises questions around the institutionalization of culture as a set of endangered and disappearing ways of life. The article reviews these institutional approaches to cultural preservation in relation to the politics of erasure, the creative interplay of heritage destruction and renewal. This is then further examined against the backdrop of indigenous identity politics played out in two contested public arenas: the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

Το άρθρο εξετάζει τη νέα ταυτότητα του μουσείου υπό το πρίσμα της άυλης κληρονομιάς. Παρουσιάζοντας πρωτογενή στοιχεία από έρευνα πεδίου που πραγματοποιήθηκε στη Νέα Ζηλανδία και το Βανουάτου, το κείμενο σκιαγραφεί τη μετάθεση του μουσειολογικού ενδιαφέροντος από τη συλλογή αντικειμένων, στον άνθρωπο, στη ζωντανή παράδοση και στην κοινωνία.

The Musée du Quai Branly (MQB), France’s new national ethnographic
museum was the vision of a man of politics, the country’s former
President, Jacques Chirac. Drawing on data gathered over several
weeks of fieldwork in the period July 2006-February 2007, as part of
my ongoing doctoral research at the MQB, I explore the political and
ideological dimensions of the museum’s rhetoric vis-à-vis the art and
culture of the ‘non-West’. As such, I examine how the museum’s
mission to ‘see justice rendered to non-European cultures’ is
translated in museum-work. At first, I assess the processes that led to
the foundation of the MQB, by exploring the ‘museumification’ of
ethnographic material culture based on the poetics and politics of the
MQB’s ancestors, the Musée de l’Homme and the Musée des Arts
d’Afrique et d’Océanie. I then move on to question how the political will
to re-imagine the relationship of France with its former colonies is
pursued in the MQB’s exhibitions, programmes and events. What
emerges from my fieldwork is on the one hand that the MQB’s narratives
are strongly dominated by the curatorial voice and are, thus, rooted in
Eurocentric conceptualisations of the ‘exotic other’ viewed through
the prism of ‘aesthetic universalism’. Parallel to that, however, my
research so far reveals that the museum through its different activities
critically engages with the political and ideological calls for an inclusive
postcolonial museology.

With this paper I make a proposal for the contextualisation
of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in the interdisciplinary
field of heritage studies and museology, drawing on early
research conducted during my internship at UNESCO and
the first years of my doctorate. I examine emerging
conceptualisations of the term starting with the national
legislation of Japan and Korea in the 50s and 60s, and
more recently with the interventions of UNESCO. In
addition, I assess the development of ICH in terms of the
academic/intellectual discussions around the ‘alternative
heritage discourse’ and the ‘new museological discourse’.
Finally, drawing on interviews with Professor Patrick
Boylan, Dr Richard Kurin and Mr Ralph Regenvanu,
conducted in 2006-2007, I draw some preliminary
conclusions as to the wider impact of ICH on heritage and
museum theory and practice. What emerges is a critical
examination of the diverse conceptualisations and
appropriations of ICH, and of its potential to constitute a
new heritage discourse at the interface of ‘universalism’
and ‘particularism’

The concept of intangible heritage can have significant implications for museums in the areas of collecting, making exhibitions and working with communities. Drawing on the model of the 'post-museum' envisioned by Hooper-Greenhill (2000), some of the ways in which the concept of intangible heritage can affect museum practice are examined. The limitations and concerns around the engagement of museums with intangible heritage are analysed and future challenges are identified. It is hoped that this paper will provide practical insights and help explain how the concept of intangible heritage can contribute to the discussions around the 'post-museum'. The aim is that the issues discussed will raise awareness with respect to the impact of intangible heritage and invite museums to extend their concern from objects per se to the human element inherent in objects.

This paper was presented at the international conference 'Intangible! Living Heritage in Museums' at the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin, 6-7 June 2024. It draws on the distinction between history and memory articulated by Pierre Nora and the stipulations of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage to examine historical and memorial museum approaches in safeguarding intangible heritage.

A thought piece/ message on the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage following a call from the ICH NGO Forum 'Celebrating Living Heritage @20Years' and available from: https://www.ichngoforum.org/messages/

Invited paper at the international workshop ‘Reconfiguring Language Preservation and Protecting Language-Related Social Practices and Spaces’, organised by the research group ‘Anthropological Linguistics/ Linguistic Anthropology’, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, J. Guttenberg University Mainz, Germany, 1st December 2023.

Invited talk at the workshop 'Dance as Intangible Heritage', Astra Museum, Sibiu, Romania, 9 October 2023, public event of EU Project 'Dance as Intangible Heritage: New Models of Facilitating Participatory Dance Events'
(https://www.dancingaslivingheritage.eu)

Invited paper presented at the Global Summit of Research Museums II 'Objects in Motion - Museums in Motion', held at the Deutches Museum in Munich, 17-19 October 2022. The topic of the panel was Physical Objects, Intangible Heritage and the Digital Age.

Further information about the conference: https://www.leibniz-forschungsmuseen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Forschungsmuseen/Program_GSRM_II_update.pdf

Invited talk presented at the International Workshop ‘Resilience and Marketisation: Uses of Intangible Heritage in times of economic crisis’, co-organised by UNESCO Frictions (EHESS Paris) and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture at the Museum of Modern Greek Culture in Athens, 3-4 September 2019.

Το Κολέγιο του Γουίντσεστερ στη Βρετανία φιλοξένησε την εικονική δίκη του Λόρδου Ελγιν, εξετάζοντας κατά πόσον τα Γλυπτά του Παρθενώνα βρίσκονται νομίμως στο Βρετανικό Μουσείο 23/5/2023
https://www.kathimerini.gr/culture/562436989/glypta-toy-parthenona-i-k-sti-sygchroni-diki-toy-lordoy-elgin/