Manon Istasse
I completed my master and her Ph. D. in social and cultural anthropology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). As an anthropologist, I’m interested in two main topics of research, cultural heritage and food.
She dedicated her master and Ph. D. dissertations to cultural heritage in Fez (Morocco), investigating the daily life in a World Heritage site. I spent about 2 years doing fieldwork in Fez. In my master dissertation, I’m interested in how “young generations” take care of heritage. I took as case study an international summer work camp of heritage preservation in Fez. I went further in my Ph.D dissertation, where I asked the question of how to inhabit a World Heritage site. I focus on one element of official heritage, namely houses in the medina of Fez in Morocco, listed as part of the World Heritage since 1981, and I follow a guiding question: how do human beings come to qualify a thing, be it tangible or intangible, as heritage?
After having defended my dissertation, I carried out two postdoctoral researches in France with collective projects. In Picardie, I studied how local associations interested in cultural heritage develop knowledge and activities, and relate to public institutions. In Lyon, I was interested in heritage democracy and citizen participation to public project. My case study was the creation of a 3D digital model of the Lyon World Heritage area. This model is supposed to be participative as anybody could drop files to document heritage. I’m currently deepening these two topics, namely the construction and sharing of knowledge and practices related to heritage, and the use of digital technologies on the other hand, in French-speaking Belgium.
I also carried out several researches about food in Morocco, in Belgium and in Cambodia. I studied the development of organic food in the first two countries and the claims for halal food in Belgium. In Cambodia, I investigated food among societies practicing swidden agriculture in the Ratanakiri province, Northeast Cambodia. I provides a qualitative and anthropological description of food habits, practices and representations among these non-Khmer populations (Kreung, Tampuan, Kavet and Jaraï).
She dedicated her master and Ph. D. dissertations to cultural heritage in Fez (Morocco), investigating the daily life in a World Heritage site. I spent about 2 years doing fieldwork in Fez. In my master dissertation, I’m interested in how “young generations” take care of heritage. I took as case study an international summer work camp of heritage preservation in Fez. I went further in my Ph.D dissertation, where I asked the question of how to inhabit a World Heritage site. I focus on one element of official heritage, namely houses in the medina of Fez in Morocco, listed as part of the World Heritage since 1981, and I follow a guiding question: how do human beings come to qualify a thing, be it tangible or intangible, as heritage?
After having defended my dissertation, I carried out two postdoctoral researches in France with collective projects. In Picardie, I studied how local associations interested in cultural heritage develop knowledge and activities, and relate to public institutions. In Lyon, I was interested in heritage democracy and citizen participation to public project. My case study was the creation of a 3D digital model of the Lyon World Heritage area. This model is supposed to be participative as anybody could drop files to document heritage. I’m currently deepening these two topics, namely the construction and sharing of knowledge and practices related to heritage, and the use of digital technologies on the other hand, in French-speaking Belgium.
I also carried out several researches about food in Morocco, in Belgium and in Cambodia. I studied the development of organic food in the first two countries and the claims for halal food in Belgium. In Cambodia, I investigated food among societies practicing swidden agriculture in the Ratanakiri province, Northeast Cambodia. I provides a qualitative and anthropological description of food habits, practices and representations among these non-Khmer populations (Kreung, Tampuan, Kavet and Jaraï).
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Papers by Manon Istasse
In this paper, I describe the qualification process of halal food as ethical. I take as starting point the association Green Halal in Belgium, and I describe how it promotes a new islamic ethics though food habits. On the basis of this description, the theory of conventions helps defining ethics as a worth involved in several worlds, and as a social construction resulting from trials.
Facebook is a collaborative framework that contributes to what is coined “heritage democracy” by giving visibility to various regimes of engagement with heritage. The description and analysis of a Facebook group dedicated to the heritage of a French town, and its comparison with the citizen sciences’ frameworks, shows the limited nature of this democratic opening. First, discourses about heritage on Facebook does not challenge the official discourse about heritage. Moreover the divide between experts and amateurs underpins its functioning. Secondly, unlike citizen sciences, the production of knowledge within these groups is not driven by a desire to accumulate knowledge, nor does it foster relations between professionals and amateurs. Finally, the Facebook groups promote a vision of the citizen as somebody who participates in and is competent, vigilant, attentive and possibly nostalgic of the commons built and presented within the group. The form of engagement in these groups can thus be likened to the “post-it” engagement described in contemporary civil society organizations.
Conference Presentations by Manon Istasse
In my current research, I am interested in the way actors daily use cultural heritage in a Unesco listed city. Having my fieldwork in Fez, Morocco, I investigate guest houses and homestay in Moroccan families. Indeed, these houses are places of cultural encounter and dialogue (between tourists, Moroccans, residents,...) and local crises over the applications and consequences of World Heritage politics. Each case is concerned with questions about the private (intimate) and public (universal) aspects of heritage, the relation to space, the significance of the UNESCO for the actors, and the use of the label.
In a first time, I present the daily life of and during these camps: who are the participants and what are their personal motivations for participating, what do they do in general and during the camp, and what are their relations with heritage? Investigating the social life of these camps also leads to have a look at all the actors involved, such as the Moroccan association organising the camp, its French associative partner, the local institution in charge of the restoration of medina houses, UNESCO, etc. I finally present how the camps and the partnership between Moroccan and French associations has evolved since 2008 after the involvement of architects in the organisation of these camps.
In a second part, I highlight some issues and approaches that could be developed in a further study of these camps. The first issue is that of social relations, with a special focus on the “local scale”. The second issue is about the presence of various forms of heritage and a kind of “heritage fiction” during these camps. I finish with two approaches in the investigation of heritage camps. One relates to the need of associating vertical and horizontal investigations (various scales and various actors in a same scale), while the second explores what a comparative approach (France/Morocco) may bring.
In this paper, I describe the qualification process of halal food as ethical. I take as starting point the association Green Halal in Belgium, and I describe how it promotes a new islamic ethics though food habits. On the basis of this description, the theory of conventions helps defining ethics as a worth involved in several worlds, and as a social construction resulting from trials.
Facebook is a collaborative framework that contributes to what is coined “heritage democracy” by giving visibility to various regimes of engagement with heritage. The description and analysis of a Facebook group dedicated to the heritage of a French town, and its comparison with the citizen sciences’ frameworks, shows the limited nature of this democratic opening. First, discourses about heritage on Facebook does not challenge the official discourse about heritage. Moreover the divide between experts and amateurs underpins its functioning. Secondly, unlike citizen sciences, the production of knowledge within these groups is not driven by a desire to accumulate knowledge, nor does it foster relations between professionals and amateurs. Finally, the Facebook groups promote a vision of the citizen as somebody who participates in and is competent, vigilant, attentive and possibly nostalgic of the commons built and presented within the group. The form of engagement in these groups can thus be likened to the “post-it” engagement described in contemporary civil society organizations.
In my current research, I am interested in the way actors daily use cultural heritage in a Unesco listed city. Having my fieldwork in Fez, Morocco, I investigate guest houses and homestay in Moroccan families. Indeed, these houses are places of cultural encounter and dialogue (between tourists, Moroccans, residents,...) and local crises over the applications and consequences of World Heritage politics. Each case is concerned with questions about the private (intimate) and public (universal) aspects of heritage, the relation to space, the significance of the UNESCO for the actors, and the use of the label.
In a first time, I present the daily life of and during these camps: who are the participants and what are their personal motivations for participating, what do they do in general and during the camp, and what are their relations with heritage? Investigating the social life of these camps also leads to have a look at all the actors involved, such as the Moroccan association organising the camp, its French associative partner, the local institution in charge of the restoration of medina houses, UNESCO, etc. I finally present how the camps and the partnership between Moroccan and French associations has evolved since 2008 after the involvement of architects in the organisation of these camps.
In a second part, I highlight some issues and approaches that could be developed in a further study of these camps. The first issue is that of social relations, with a special focus on the “local scale”. The second issue is about the presence of various forms of heritage and a kind of “heritage fiction” during these camps. I finish with two approaches in the investigation of heritage camps. One relates to the need of associating vertical and horizontal investigations (various scales and various actors in a same scale), while the second explores what a comparative approach (France/Morocco) may bring.
In anthropological terms, the monograph consists in an ethnographic description of the food social space (Poulain 2005) of highlanders in the Ratanakiri province. It intends to describe the main aspects of food practices, habits and representations, covering the six dimensions of highlanders’ food social space, that is to say: the space of edible (what has been chosen as edible food in the environment and participates in the food identity of a human group), the food system (the food network from growing to eating), the culinary space (the place to cook as a spatial, technical and social space), the consumption habits (rituals and processes around incorporation), food temporality (life, day and cyclic cycles), and the space of social distinctions. This investigation allows questioning the relevance of Sahlins’ concept of affluent societies in contemporary Ratanakiri.