scholarly journals A Digital Platform to (Re)Link Heritage of Malaysia: Co-Producing Information Concerning ICH.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182
Author(s):  
Irfan Ullah ◽  
◽  
Mokhtar Saidin ◽  
Abdul Mutalib ◽  
◽  
...  

Since its implementation, the UNESCO’s Convention for the Protection and safeguarding of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) remains a field of co-operation in what concerns its application in community and nation-wide strategies for the countries that approved the document. One of its the tangible influences has been the consciousness that new creativities must take place to recognise and document the living tradition of each region. Consequently, identifying Intangible Cultural Heritage is a keyword for the expansion of safeguarding and protection strategies, as it remains a dominant issue when it comes to pleasing to action any plan in this arena. The “Repository of Penang Cultural Diversity” is a working process project designed as a digital platform to enhance the broadcasting of knowledge and information about ICH in the Penang region (West Malaysia). It imagines a comprehensive approach to cultural heritage: material (buildings, objects, museum collections), intangible (know-how, cultural practices) and natural (cultural landscapes). Also, highlights a historical perception as well a modern view of how folk practices are taking place these days and highlights the active and developing nature of ICH. This short paper deliberates the concepts that guide the project, objectives and methodologies.

Author(s):  
Gül Aktürk ◽  
Martha Lerski

AbstractClimate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues of discrimination, conflict, and security. As the number of climate-displaced populations grows, the generations-deep connection to their rituals, customs, and ancestral ties with the land, cultural practices, and intangible cultural heritage become endangered. However, intangible heritage is often overlooked in the context of climate displacement. This paper presents reflections based on observations regarding the intangible heritage of voluntarily displaced communities. It begins by examining intangible heritage under the threat of climate displacement, with place-based examples. It then reveals intangible heritage as a catalyst to building resilient communities by advocating for the cultural values of indigenous and all people in climate action planning. It concludes the discussion by presenting the implications of climate displacement in existing intangible heritage initiatives. This article seeks to contribute to the emerging policies of preserving intangible heritage in the context of climate displacement.


Ethnologies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 297-324
Author(s):  
Hélène Giguère

This paper deals with European experiences of inscription of traditional cultural practices on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). It will first establish the institutional context of the UNESCO’s listing within the framework of reflections on cultural rights. Then, the author briefly presents four European masterpieces in the Mediterranean area. A comparative analysis follows which specifically focuses on the multiplication of practitioners and on translocality; on the overlapping between institutions and artisans; on the use of intangible cultural heritage as a driver for local development via cultural tourism; and on the multimedia “museification” of the intangible. The comparative study of the listing of these intangible cultural heritage traditions also questions the value of customary law versus freedom of expression and creation. It reveals the tensions between the “purity” and “impurity” of cultural practices and social agents, as well as exclusions related to ethnicity, sex or territory. These tensions create new social divisions and remodel the link people have with cultural practices. An examination of gender sheds light on the marginality of women in public space.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Lees

AbstractThis article considers the measures being taken in Bhutan to support the cultural practices and traditions of weaving as Bhutan rapidly moves to modernize. Woven cloth is one of a number of artisan practices in Bhutan that contribute to a unique body of intangible cultural heritage, and a distinctive and instantly recognizable Bhutanese identity. Cloth and cloth production have come to have significant influence on the cultural, socioeconomic and political, as well as the ceremonial and religious life of the people of Bhutan. However with modernization and an increasingly global outlook, many socioeconomic transformations are taking place, challenging traditional cultural practices to remain relevant and viable to younger generations. Bhutan offers a unique case study as a country engaging only relatively recently with globalization after a long history of cultural isolation. Bhutan also offers up a unique policy response to modernization, its Gross National Happiness (GNH) measure, which attempts to embody a strong social, cultural, and environmental imperative within the development process. This article will analyze the various measures taking place to maintain cultural identity and cultural practices within the context of development policy and practice, and will link this discussion to measures and approaches taking place at an international level by agencies such as UNESCO.


Author(s):  
Lonán Ó Briain

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book and outlines a new paradigm for research on the cultural practices of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities. It opens with a description of two contrasting approaches to this research. Certain strategies for presenting results in public fora are shown to promote unhelpful stereotypes on these people. The author attempts to bridge the gap between contrasting methodologies and ideologies by promoting constructive dialogue between these groups of scholars within the fields of anthropology, ethnology, and musicology This dialogue is stimulated by identifying and working towards a shared goal: the sustainability of intangible cultural heritage in a rapidly urbanizing society.


Author(s):  
W. B. Yang ◽  
Y. N. Ye

ICOMOS Florence Declaration in 2014, encourages an in-depth reflection on human values through cultural heritage and landscapes, which emphasizes the importance of historical heritage sites, in order to achieve the application of cultural heritage records through the public participation, sharing new technology platform and facilitation tools for knowledge diffusion, for instance. Nikos adopted digitized intangible cultural heritage within i-Treasures project to create a novel digital platform in 2016. Nowadays, the display platform developed based on geographic information system has been gradually accepted and widely used to distribute cultural heritage information, aiming to combine geography, time, events, issues, trends with the interactive maps to show the context of data changes from the consideration of planarity; for example, Burnaby City in Canada has cooperated with the Columbia University to create a navigation platform for guidance of tangible cultural heritage based on story maps in order to provide public recognition function.<br><br> In this study, Qiong-Lin Settlement in Kinmen Area was taken as an example to illustrate the developing process of an overall planning framework for reappearing the glory of historic settlements of cultural heritage sites with digital technology, which included tangible and intangible cultural heritage preservation and transmission planning, community participation and digital navigation programs. The digital technology with the GIS-based digital platform can provide more diverse and interesting information while using an intuitive, graphical user story mapping interface. So that tangible cultural heritage can be effectively understood, interpreted and preserved with the value-added methods, and also intangible cultural heritage can be continuously transmitted to establish a complete system of cultural heritage preservation. The main contents include several navigation technologies, such as 3D laser scanning, UAV images, photogrammetry, panorama, audio/video, geographic information systems etc.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
James Baker ◽  
Sofya Shahab ◽  
Mariz Tadros

Abstract We document cultural heritage to preserve cultural heritage, to ensure its survival by pushing back against the entropic forces of forgetting and neglect. These entropic forces are particularly acute for intangible cultural heritage preserved in digital form and produced in fragile and conflict-affected settings. And whilst professionals from across the “memory” professions have responded to these challenges, based on our experience of development work with young people in Egypt and Iraq, they have done so in ways that are ill-suited to the worldviews, cultural practices, educational experience and learning models of those outside centres of archival power. This paper describes the delivery of “digital archiving” workshops, training, support and resources developed by an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral collective of academics, practitioners, community leaders and community participants. Working at the intersection of development studies, heritage management and digital preservation, this paper argues that cultural heritage practices are enriched by foregrounding particular place-based and contingent activities that productively peel back the provincialism of the canons of enlightenment memory work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Festo W. Gabriel

This paper examines local communities’ understanding of archaeology and cultural heritage resources. This study was conducted among the Makonde communities of the Mtwara Region of south-eastern Tanzania. The paper presents and critically discusses local communities’ views upon the meaning of archaeology and cultural heritage resources in general. The study used community-based methods by use of interviews, archaeological ethnography and focus group discussions. The results of this study reveal that the local communities in the Mtwara Region are not aware of the meaning of archaeology regardless of the number of archaeological researches that have been conducted in the region. Their understanding of the past is very much confined to intangible cultural traditions which are inherited and practised from one generation to another. Some conclusions are provided which undoubtedly indicate that according to the local communities’ perceptions cultural heritage resources are mainly characterized by intangible cultural practices and beliefs. As this study unveils, in this case tangible heritage resources have less importance to the local communities. This is contrary to the professional or academic conceptions which provide a dual focus on conservation and protection of tangible cultural heritage resources. It is only very recently that we see some studies being conducted focusing on intangible cultural heritage resources.


The field of cultural heritage is no longer solely dependent on the expertise of art and architectural historians, archaeologists, conservators, curators, and site and museum administrators. It has dramatically expanded across disciplinary boundaries and social contexts, with even the basic definition of what constitutes cultural heritage being widened far beyond the traditional categories of architecture, artifacts, archives, and art. Heritage now includes vernacular architecture, intangible cultural practices, knowledge, and language, performances, and rituals, as well as cultural landscapes. Heritage has also become increasingly entangled with the broader social, political, and economic contexts in which heritage is created, managed, transmitted, protected, or even destroyed. Heritage protection now encompasses a growing set of methodological approaches whose objectives are not necessarily focused upon the maintenance of material fabric, which has traditionally been cultural heritage’s primary concern. This handbook charts some of the major sites of convergence between the humanities and the social sciences—where new disciplinary perspectives are being brought to bear on heritage. These convergences have the potential to provide the inter-disciplinary expertise needed not only to critique but also to achieve the intertwined intellectual, political, and socio-economic goals of cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. This volume highlights the potential contributions of development studies, political science, anthropology, management studies, human geography, ecology, psychology, sociology, cognitive studies, and education to heritage studies and management.


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