Problematizing technologies for documenting intangible culture: Some positive and negative consequences

Abstract

The 2003 UNESCO Convention to "safeguard intangible cultural heritage" raises a number of interesting political questions: - Who decides what cultural forms are to be recorded, documented, and safeguarded?1 - What is the purpose(s) of heritage documentation, in specific instances? - In practice, whose interests does this safeguarding primarily serve? - Who is doing the safeguarding and what are the relationships, particularly relationships of power and authority, between various parties involved in safeguarding practices, including institutions such as museums, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as their representatives in interactions with various local-level community organizations, institutions and their individual members? - Who are the audiences of heritage documentation and how are safeguarding practices and presentations of safeguarded materials accountable to the needs and interests of distinct audiences? - What practices are appropriate, and not appropriate, to safeguarding intangible expressive forms for specific cultures or social groups? - How are safeguarded performances made accessible (in culturally appropriate ways) to members of traditional communities whose forms of intangible heritage are being safeguarded? - How is the Convention's educational mandate carried out with respect to traditional communities,2 especially indigenous communities, who receive special recognition in the Convention's framing paragraphs (UNESCO2003)? - Ultimately,who are the beneficiaries of heritage safeguarding and preservation? While this is not an exhaustive list, these questions focus attention to some of the political entailments and issues of power and control that pertain to institutional "safeguarding," documentation, management, and display of intangible cultural forms. They are especially relevant to indigenous as well as other subaltern peoples who typically have not been active participants in institutional debates and decisions about efforts to record and document their intangible as well as tangible cultures. Historically, outsiders have been the primary leaders of these initiatives. The extent to which individual and community collaboration in such projects may be influenced by perceptions of outside institutions and their representatives' power and prestige rather than by local understandings of the objectives, uses, and implications of such projects, as well as local motivations or commitments to such projects is, in many cases, an open question. Ethnographic work is necessary to understand local ideologies of intangible culture in relation to safeguarding, documentation and representational practices. It is also essential to comprehending the precise nature of indigenous conceptions of and participation in such activities. Further, greater ethnographic transparency is needed to identify and understand the nature of outside cultural mediators' involvement in and ways that it affects all aspects of safeguarding practice - from decisions about what intangible cultural forms are selected to be safeguarded, how they are recorded and documented, as well as how they are subsequently managed and represented both within local communities and to outside audiences. As local communities increasingly become involved in intangible heritage representation and management, ethnographic documentation of all aspects of these processes in specific cases will help provide bases for understanding the nature of outside cultural mediators' involvement as well as indigenous attitudes toward participation in and conceptions of this work. To advance thought along these lines, this chapter has two objectives. The first is to provoke critical reflection about dimensions of power and control that are entailed in documentation and dissemination of forms of indigenous intangible culture, particularly the use of technologies for recording and documenting. To bring attention to the existence of alternative ideologies concerning the use of technology in safeguarding and documenting indigenous languages and intangible cultural forms I begin by discussing some of the ideological assumptions that underpin the UNESCO Convention. Consideration of perspectives articulated by contemporary Yuchi who are working with the last few remaining fluent speakers to revitalize their language raises important questions about some fundamental presuppositions of intangible cultural documentation and preservation. Yuchi language activists are highly skeptical of technology as a means of safeguarding and revitalizing their language. Generally speaking, their experience with past documentary projects makes them leery of such projects. The Yuchi example provokes thought about whose interests "safeguarding" projects ultimately serve and whether documentation and recording as a means of "safeguarding" is really, in all cases, the best way to serve the interests of local communities. This chapter's second objective is to advocate for greater local control over and involvement with technologies and processes related to the documentation and representation of intangible culture. Using the example of the central Brazilian Xavante community of Eté nhiritipa (also known in Portuguese as Pimentel Barbosa), I argue that increasing indigenous access to and command of technologies creates new possibilities for and engagement in local management of cultural documentation and representational practices. I caution, however, thatwhile taking charge of representational forms and processesmay provide means for empowerment and cultural revitalization (see for example, Turner 1991, 1992; Prins 2002), itmay also reinforce or create new forms of dependency. Before considering the Xavante, who exhibit tremendous enthusiasm for technology and new forms of cultural documentation and representation (both to themselves and to outsiders), it is useful to first contemplate some assumptions that underlie the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and heritage management practice in general. © 2009 Springer Science Business Media, LLC.