The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

In 2003, UNESCO declared Akyns, the bardic storytellers of Kyrgyzstan, a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If this sentence makes you blink in confusion, you are not alone. When I mention UNESCO, people at first think that maybe I'm talking about a cookie company. However, UNESCO is actually an acronym that stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO is unfamiliar to many Americans because the U.S. withdrew its membership between 1984 and 2003 to protest what our government felt was the organization's mismanagement and anti-American bias.

The concept of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) is unfamiliar to most people, as well. Intangible heritage refers to the kinds of culture that are usually transmitted directly, without mediation, from members of one generation to the next: music, ritual, local knowledge, and so on. A particular culture or art form must be deemed both valuable and “under threat” in order to be listed on the UNESCO registry of intangible world heritage. Being put on the intangible heritage list raises that culture's international visibility as well as its local esteem, attracting tourism, grants, and increased attention from the national government. In the case of the Akyns of Kyrgyzstan, the action plan supported by UNESCO (with money from the Japanese government) sponsored a conference and singing competitions, and created training centers around the country where traditional methods of teaching the art could be practiced.

But the part of the concept “Masterpiece of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” that most intrigued me (and thus the genesis of my current research project) is the phrase “the heritage of humanity.” Heritage is a tricky word, with a variety of meanings, most of which are filled with normative and political implications. Normally, we speak of heritage in relation to a particular subsection of humanity: a family, an ethnic group, a nation, perhaps a profession. Is it possible, then, to conceive of the heritage of humanity as a whole?

With this question in mind, I set out to explore what the term "heritage" means in this context. As I learned from reading Valdimar Hafstein's excellent dissertation on UNESCO and intangible cultural heritage, the concept of heritage has evolved over time in a way that enhances the sovereignty of nation-states as well as creating a framework within international law that helps protect communities' rights to control their own cultural properties.

In the 1966 UNESCO Declaration on the Principles of International Cultural Cooperation, heritage implies human unity, both over time and across cultures. Culture is a human universal, and humanity universally values cultural difference: “In their rich variety and diversity, and in the reciprocal influences they exert on one another, all cultures form part of the common heritage belonging to all mankind [sic].” In the World Heritage Convention of 1972, the language emphasizes that some instances of heritage "are of outstanding interest and therefore need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole." The point here seems to be that humanity has a common stake in preserving certain aspects of particular cultures. The 1972 convention also recognizes the sovereignty of individual states over the heritage located on their territory and emphasizes the duties, rather than the rights, of humankind towards these cultural forms.

This view of the heritage of humanity as the object of common interest and the bearer of common obligation is present in UNESCO's more recent programs on intangible heritage, as well. The 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage addressed increasing concerns about globalization and the loss of cultural diversity not just in legal but also in economic terms, recognizing "intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development." The Convention also reflects a sensitivity to cross-border and sub-national cultures and acknowledges "that communities, in particular indigenous communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals, play an important role in the production, safeguarding, maintenance and re-creation of the intangible cultural heritage." However, as Hafstein argues, since all activities related to the Convention take place through UN member states, in effect, ICH activities can only preserve cultural transmission by bringing traditional practices into the governmental sphere and integrating them into official administrative structures.

In the case of Akyns, who were already part of official nation-building campaigns in Kyrgyzstan before the declaration of their status as Masterpieces, this integration into state structures will probably have little effect. However, in other cases of Masterpieces of ICH that I plan on investigating (such as the Boysun region of Uzbekistan and Maroon culture in Jamaica), regionally distinct groups may find the international prestige and assistance they receive to be a useful counterweight to the pressures brought upon them by increasing integration with the nation-state.

Outsiders and Cultural Heritage

I am currently working on a research project about globalization and intangible culture heritage (what is that? See my post on this concept). In the realm of culture, globalization homogenizes culture by making bland Western pop culture ubiquitous, but it also diversifies by giving people in any part of the world the opportunity to develop a taste for the exotic (which I mean in the literal sense: "from the outside").

However, economic globalization and its predecessor, industrialization, have created structural conditions that threaten cultural diversity. Wage labor draws young people away from traditional culture producing occupations, markets for traditional cultural objects shrink as people aspire to consume foreign-produced goods, local handicrafts cannot compete with cheap plastic imports, and so on. When one generation cannot pass on its knowledge about how to make these objects and its esteem for their value, tradition dies and local communities become more dependent on those from the outside. Choices become more limited, not more diverse.

While reading The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Nepal: Future Directions, I came across this analysis: "Training in traditional craftsmanship or skills is taught through 'learning by doing' within the family and traditional workshops…the skill transfer is inter-family and inter-caste and normally takes place within this closed circle." So far, so good. Then the author goes on to juxtapose the culture as it exists now (integrated into the daily lives of the older generation) and how it might be preserved in the future:

"Having said this, there is still a need for reinterpreting and successfully communicating elements of ICH [intangible cultural heritage] knowledge and skills to younger generations. The modern way of learning and living has to see the value in ICH so that the younger generations continue to practice these precious elements of heritage. Traditional artists are often local farmers, who are heavily involved in their occupations. Hence their folk performances are mainly enacted during seasonal rituals, or spontaneous moments of singing and dancing in the villages. Folk performances are still often not taken seriously as an 'occupation,' and with the breakdown of tradition training models and funding, young artists are often unable to obtain professional opportunities, including scholarships for training. Therefore, many traditional performing arts are not consistently transmitted, nor adequately promoted to younger generations."

Singing as one works and performing rituals as part of special celebrations is the very essence of traditional culture, while folk performance as an "occupation" seems to be a contradiction in terms. Responding to the threat to traditional culture in this way is a bit ironic: the way to save traditional culture is to institutionalize or professionalize it. This can be extreme, resulting in what anthropologists and folklorists have called "frozen cultures" or "the museumification of culture:" preserving tradition for posterity's sake by removing it from its social context. This is a notion that is associated with modernity, with a Western romanticism that has spread along with globalization. It seems to me that viable solutions for the problem of threatened cultural diversity need to be based on models of sustainable economic development, even if those models are also imported "from the outside."

One of the interesting things you find if you do research on globalization is how important international organizations have become in both expanding and mitigating the effects of globalization. For example, a recent story on Fergana.ru features a family who are reviving the art of basket weaving they learned from their parents. When wage labor failed them, they turned to selling these baskets made from cheap, locally available materials. In the interview, Shakhodat Khamidova said that she and her brother "made a promise to our ancestors to keep it up in the family so that it won't be forgotten." But apparently that promise was not easy to keep since there wasn't much demand for the kinds of baskets they knew how to weave, so Khamidova made a global connection:

"I made a trip to Bishkek to learn the art of European weaving from Forgan Sandor of Hungary. The Association NAU from Khujand contacted me on my return. It was with its help that I … toured distant [villages] to meet with girls and young women there and teach them what I had learned. I have more than 300 pupils now. They phone me with words of appreciation almost every day. What really counts is that these people will find their own road in life now and find life itself all the more interesting."

Nau is apparently a non-governmental organization (NGO) funded by international donors to do development projects in northern Tajikistan. It is heartening to see donors supporting economic development through the arts. When I first started to research this topic in 2002-2003, economic development programs in the former Soviet Union were almost exclusively targeted to agriculture, tourism, and infrastructure. Outsiders play a role here mainly behind the scenes. The Khamidovs, using the knowledge and materials they already had, and with a little economic support from outsiders, seem to provide a good example of sustainable traditional craft production, one that integrates the transmission of traditional knowledge and values into the ever-changing reality of daily life.