Rights-Based Approaches to Heritage Management: Possibilities and Limitations
My Session Status
• What do heritage rights involve? How are they translated into conservation policy and practice at a local, national and/or international level?
• In what ways do heritage rights complement or collide with other socio-economic, cultural and political rights (property rights, freedom of religion and expression, women’s and minority rights, and so forth)?
• (How) do rights-based approaches contribute toward a bottom-up heritage identification, protection and management? In what ways could they be put into work in overcoming state dominance in heritage management and in resolving heritage conflicts?
Sub Sessions
The 2003 UNESCO Convention on ICH Safeguarding (ICHC) remains the primary instrument in the international protection of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Under the Convention, safeguarding responsibilities are incumbent upon the states parties. However, the Convention acknowledges the central role of the communities. Article 15 stipulates that the communities who create, maintain, and transmit elements of ICH must be ensured “the widest possible participation” by the state in the managem...
The aim of this paper is to reflect, from an historical perspective, on the ways the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention opened a new space to the dispute over Jerusalem's Old City's heritage conservation and definition. What role does UNESCO's universalizing heritage construct play in a contested city, such as Jerusalem? How are UNESCO's universalizing heritage discourses used by different actors to show hegemonic power or political resistance? The critical heritage literature h...
This paper will discuss the protection of intangible cultural heritage through the case study of a form of Malay literature known as “Pantun.” It will focus on the national treatment by Indonesia and Malaysia in protecting this form of heritage. Pantun, in a narrow definition, refers to Malay folk poetry consisting of quatrains where the first two lines and the subsequent two lines are unrelated in terms of the meaning conveyed, and the purpose of the earlier two lines is only to provide r...
This paper will explore rights-based heritage activism as a rising phenomenon in contemporary Turkey. It will do so by looking at two recent grassroots heritage campaigns against the state-led construction projects in the historic Sulukule district of Istanbul and the ancient town of Hasankeyf in Turkey’s southeast. Both places are officially recognized as protected sites, and the former even lies on Istanbul’s historic peninsula that was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1985...
Beginning with the 1906 Antiquities Act, the United States government regulated the nation’s cultural past as steward on behalf of all Americans. Indigenous culture, tradition, and law were not recognized and “archaeological resources”—including Native human remains and grave sites—remained federally-owned property until the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Premised on “cultural affiliation,” NAGPRA granted, to specific “federally-recognized” ...