Presentation Title

Glocal Perspectives on Safeguarding. CGIs, ICH, Ethics and Cultural Brokerage

Abstract

Abbreviate “intangible cultural heritage” as “ICH” and “communities, groups and in some cases, individuals” as CGIs. This allows to formula te a core message of the UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of ICH in the form of a tweet. “When safeguarding ICH, the widest possible participation and active involvement of CGIs is the right thing to do” (UNESCO 2003 Convention)”. A global mantra: easy to like but very hard to realize. A glocal challenge.

A reshuffled version of the 12 Ethical Principles (since 2016 part of the Basic Texts of the 2003 Convention) captures the tension between “relative autonomy” and “interventions”. This new tool sensitizes users about the characteristics of/and relations between CGIs, ICH and safeguarding. Together with, but also counterbalancing, the new chapter of the operational directives “Chapter VI - Safeguarding ICH and sustainable development at the national level” since 2016, it articulates aspirations and modules of an ethical program of global proportions. Via the clear link with the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations, the “national level” can be put between inverted commas (something for instance the experience in a federal state Belgium has to do per definition); thinking out of the box, glocally. Should we mobilize adjectives like national, international, cosmopolitan and/or glocal? The paragraphs 170 to 176 of the 2016 version of the Operational Directives, in combination with the Ethical Principles, constitute quite a challenge, together with clues (see §171 d) on how to go forward.

Biography

Marc JACOBS (1963) is director of FARO. Flemish Interface for Cultural Heritage, Brussels, Belgium (www.faro.be; marc.jacobs@faro.be) and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, mmjacobs@vub.ac.be), where he coordinates the “UNESCO chair on critical heritage studies and in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage”. He obtained a Ph.D. in history at the VUB in 1998. His previous affiliations were the University Ghent (1985-1987), European University Institute in Florence (1987-1991), University Antwerp (1991-1995), VUB (1992-1999), Vlaams Centrum voor Volkscultuur (1999-2007), Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (associate professor 2007-2008), FARO (2008-present) and VUB (2011-present). He works on social and cultural history, heritage policy and theory, history of popular culture, food studies and the history of sugar, and recently augmented reality apps for heritage.

Marc Jacobs has been involved in elaborating, implementing and analyzing the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage since 2001. He represented Belgium in the Intergovernmental Committee between 2006 and 2008 and between 2012 and 2016. Today he explores the importance of ethics, cultural sustainability and brokerage in the ICH paradigm and the relevance of critical heritage studies.