1. This book is the first collection of essays by noted folklorist, Regina F. Bendix, that explore how cultures create, give, and maintain value for cultural elements and artifacts.2. Bendix's work ...seeks to transcend specialized perspectives on cultural heritage and integrate this booming research area into general folklore and anthropology research.3. Includes new content including an introduction to the book, introductions to each of the three sections in the book, and two articles that have been translated into English from the original German for the first time.
When heritage becomes a commodity, when culture is instrumental in driving tourism, and when individuals assert ownership over either, social, ideological, political, and economic motivations intertwine. Bestowing value on "culture" is itself a culturally rooted act, and the essays gathered inCulture and Valuefocus on the motivations and value regimes people in particular times and contexts have generated to enhance the visibility and prestige of cultural practices, narratives, and artifacts.
This collection of essays by noted folklorist Regina F. Bendix, offers a personal record of the unfolding scholarly debate regarding value in the studies of tourism, heritage, and cultural property. Written over the course of several decades, Bendix's case studies and theoretical contributions chronicle the growing and transforming ways in which ethnographic scholarship has observed social actors generating value when carrying culture to market, enhancing value in inventing protective and restorative regimes for culture, and securing the potential for both in devising property rights. Bendix's work makes a case for a reflexive awareness of the changing scholarly paradigms that inform scholars' research contributions.
The clash of June 1967, called by Israelis the Six-Day War and by Palestinians the Naksa (setback), is a critical milestone within the longstanding Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Despite all the ...scholarly attention ever since, there remain unheard voices and untold stories. It is the personal stories of people in the region that are at the center of this book. How do they remember 1967? How were their lives affected, even changed dramatically as a result of that short war? Listening to their stories as told some 50 years later, an incomplete tapestry of memories and understandings emerge. This book is the product of a re- search collaboration among Palestinian, Israeli and European folklorists, cultural anthropologists and sociologists. The personal stories were collected in the framework of interviews with men and women from all walks of life, on the days before, during and after this dramatic confrontation. The book is comprised of eleven chapters based on a corpus of several hundred conversations, as well as eight representative interviews. Together they afford insight into differential memories and sensations, visions of euphoria and despair, newly revived hopes, pain and disappointment, disillusionment and repentance.
Sensory matters have crossed paths with cultural scholarship for more than two centuries and have, during the past two decades, received renewed attention in ethnological fields and various ...publishing ventures. The working of the senses in tandem with cognition facilitates the experience of pleasure and pain, fear and elation – but to what extent can (or should) this realm, situated between individual experience and social coding, be accessible to cultural research? The paper probes a number of examples and methodological issues in grasping experiences and sites of interaction where sensations are expressed in a culturally shared fashion and explores which areas of research may profit particularly from an expanded ethnographic sensibility.
The vast number of human remains in scientific research, museum and teaching collections bring the multifaceted terms ‘custody’ and ‘custodianship’ into view. The question of ‘custodianship’ and ...‘curation’ is part and parcel of the language of collection, yet human remains push the question of ownership to a more elementary level. The authors look at the meanings of custodianship as used (and not yet used) within the framework of an interdisciplinary project on academic collections of human remains. They suggest that expanding from custodial protection, representation and expertise to custodial responsibility and care may offer a lens for framing the past and for ‘letting go’ in the future.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is a sensible approach for addressing complex problems. However, academic training and the resulting disciplinary habitus (and competition) often leave such ...collaborative skills woefully underdeveloped. This contribution outlines how ethnographic sensibilities and skills may contribute to overcoming borders between disciplinary practitioners and enhancing self-awareness within and across scientific and scholarly practice. It thus proposes ethnographic attention as interdisciplinary midwifery.
The David Buchan Lecture 2018 examines a range of small memorial interventions from occupational culture to Holocaust markers. Rather than working with large figures on pedestals, they are designed ...to subtly disrupt everyday perception. What are the motives behind such initiatives? Who pays for them? What kinds of materials are they made of and how do they seek to imprint their message onto present and future generations? Drawing from American and German cases, similar questions present themselves: who is entitled to decide what should be publicly remembered and in what form? How effective are small memorial interventions in stirring public discussion of the past? How does intentional memorial activity compare to actual evidence of historical events in everyday life?
When heritage becomes a commodity, when culture is instrumental in driving tourism, and when individuals assert ownership over either, social, ideological, political, and economic motivations ...intertwine. Bestowing value on "culture" is itself a culturally rooted act, and the essays gathered in Culture and Value focus on the motivations and value regimes people in particular times and contexts have generated to enhance the visibility and prestige of cultural practices, narratives, and artifacts. This collection of essays by noted folklorist Regina F. Bendix, offers a personal record of the unfolding scholarly debate regarding value in the studies of tourism, heritage, and cultural property. Written over the course of several decades, Bendix's case studies and theoretical contributions chronicle the growing and transforming ways in which ethnographic scholarship has observed social actors generating value when carrying culture to market, enhancing value in inventing protective and restorative regimes for culture, and securing the potential for both in devising property rights. Bendix's work makes a case for a reflexive awareness of the changing scholarly paradigms that inform scholars' research contributions.
At once a slogan and a vision for future scholarship, interdisciplinarity promises to break through barriers to address today's complex challenges. Yet even high-stakes projects often falter, undone ...by poor communication, strong feelings, bureaucratic frameworks, and contradictory incentives. This new book shows newcomers and veteran researchers how to craft associations that will lead to rich mutual learning under inevitably tricky conditions. Strikingly candid and always grounded, the authors draw a wealth of profound, practical lessons from an in-depth case study of a multiyear funded project on cultural property. Examining the social dynamics of collaboration, they show readers how to anticipate sources of conflict, nurture trust, and jump-start thinking across disciplines. Researchers and institutions alike will learn to plan for each phase of a project life cycle, capturing insights and shepherding involvement along the way.
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