Intangible Cultural Heritage in Switzerland: Whispered Words
| Responsable du projet |
Ellen Hertz
Philippe Geslin Andres Kristol Daniel Fabre Marc Olivier Gonseth Walter Leimgruber Aurélie Reusser Elzingre |
| Résumé |
This application builds directly on Sinergia project n°
100017_137773, “Intangible Cultural Heritage: the Midas Touch?”,
which has benefited from SNF funding for three years. Our overall
goal is to analyze the processes and effects of the implementation
of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible
Cultural Heritage (“ICH”) in Switzerland. Switzerland ratified this
Convention in July of 2008, obliging the federal administration to
create an inventory of Swiss ICH. As of this writing, this
procedure has been partially completed: the cantons have submitted
their inventories to the Federal Office of Culture (“FOC”), which
has selected 167 items to figure on a national list. A third step
is expected this fall when the Federal Counsel will identify a much
smaller number of these for submission to UNESCO. Over the past
three years, we have pursued our research goal as planned through
six sub-projects, each focusing on a specific aspect of ICH.
Sub-project A is an ethnography of the administration of the ICH
Convention. We follow the choices that federal and cantonal
administrators are confronted with, their interactions with other
public agencies and private actors, and the stakes raised by ICH at
the international level. Sub-project B studies the revival of
story-telling in local dialect, a practice that fits awkwardly
within the paradigm for ICH established by UNESCO. This study
includes a dialectological aspect, but also looks at the new actors
promoting Swiss-French dialects in the cantons of Wallis and Jura,
and the "neo-patoisants" who have mobilized to rescue
these vanishing languages. Sub-project C set out to investigate
forms of cultural expression that were excluded from the national
list, despite various attemps to promote them: the practice of
hip-hop and theater with migrant populations in the city of Basel.
This sub-project allows us to examine the logics of inclusion and
exclusion that are a central issue in our research design. By way
of contrast, sub-projects D and E focus on two cultural practices
that were included in the national lists of Swiss ICH: knowledge of
herbal medicine and Swiss watch-making know-how. These two examples
allow us to see how cultural practices are itemized, processes and
reshaped by their heritigization, and who stands to gain or to lose
from such procedures. Finally, sub-project F consists in a triology
of museum exhibits at the Neuchâtel Museum of Ethnography
("Bruit", Sept. 2011-June 2012; "Off Screen",
Nov. 2012-August 2013; "Secrets" Feb. 2014-Nov.2014).
These exhibits allow us to step back and reflect materially on the
ICH paradigm and its relation to the discipline. They also allow us
to focus data collection on the effects of the selection procedure,
its reception by the different audiences concerned and the debates
about national identity and the place of tradition that this
procedure will inevitably provoke. |
| Mots-clés |
folk medecine, culture, UNESCO, story-telling, multimedia, theater, museums, hip hop, know-how, folklore, heritage |
| Type de projet | Recherche fondamentale |
| Domaine de recherche | Ethnologie |
| Source de financement | FNS - Sinergia |
| Etat | Terminé |
| Début de projet | 1-10-2012 |
| Fin du projet | 31-3-2014 |
| Budget alloué | 650'000.00 |
| Autre information |
http://p3.snf.ch/projects-141927# |
| Contact | Ellen Hertz |