David Berliner

Anthropology and the study of contradictions

Contradictions constitute one fundamental aspect of human life. Humans are steeped in contradictory thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. In this debate, five anthropologists adopt an individual-centered and phenomenological perspective on contradictions. How can one live with them? How to describe them from an anthropological point of view? Should we rethink our dear notion of the “social agent” through that of contradiction?

The Anthropologist in the Middle of a Tug-of-War

Among anthropologists of both sexes, there is an enduring cliché that female anthropologists have better access to womens worlds than their male counterparts. I work about female religiosity in a West African Muslim society, the Bulongic (Guinea-Conakry), and my presence as a man was never an issue with the Bulongic women. In fact, from the beginning, I had the feeling that through my presence, the women intended to reinforce the legitimacy of their ritual performances, which was violently contested by the old men of the village. In this article, I address my position in the middle of this tug-of-war between the men and the women. By describing the ways in which Bulongic women instrumentalized my presence as a white ethnologist sensitive to their religious practices, I hope to refine our understanding of the actual effects of gender in the field.

Leave spirits outside heritage

Anna Karlström’s text constitutes a stimulating invitation to rethink the scope of what many preservationists consider “heritage.” Drawing on examples from her research in Lao PDR, she claims that experts must involve religious beliefs and practices in their definition of patrimony, and treat them as equal to the “institutionalized heritage discourse.” In a Latourian vein, the author invites us to “take spirits seriously as constitutive elements of heritage.” As a cultural anthropologist, I am sympathetic with Karlström’s stance. I concur that, in various cases, the way that local people understand religious permanence and loss does not correspond to the perspective articulated by international heritage experts. Often, heritage actions appear inappropriate. Nevertheless, in many parts of the world, diverse categories of actors converge around specific heritage sites, despite apparent misunderstandings between multiple parties who do not share a common sense of preservation. Such convergence remains relatively understudied by anthropologists in favor of stories of clashes about heritage, mostly frictions between experts and locals. While I agree with Karlström’s premises, I have important reservations about her “radical approach.” First, what strikes me is her quite vague use of the heritage planners’ discourse. My own research about UNESCO programs demonstrates that, as a matter of fact, these discourses are multiple. Although animated by the same spirit (what I have called an “institutional nostalgia” (Berliner 2012)), experts often hold contrasting perspectives on the modalities of preservation. In my current field site of Luang Prabang (a town of northern Laos and a World Heritage Site since 1995), UNESCO-Paris programs strive to preserve religious and ordinary listed monuments, while the UNESCO office in Bangkok puts emphasis on intangible heritage safeguarding, such as sculpture classes for monks to learn how to restore their temples themselves. Furthermore, within the UNESCO heritage system, discourses have changed considerably. When it started out, UNESCO espoused an evolutionist “anti-superstitions” posture (Stoczkowski 2009). Yet, over time, the scope of what could be grasped under the notion of heritage has been hugely broadened, especially with the adoption of the “Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage” in 2003 (Bortolotto 2011). Ratified by more than 140 countries, this convention has contributed to a global recognition of cultural practices, including specifically religious ones, such as, the “Pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllurit’i” in Peru, the “Traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí” in Colombia, and the “Ijele Masquerade” from Nigeria, among others. Today, religion is plainly part of heritage preservation programs, although not all religious elements are considered in the same way. Some are more “heritagizable” than others. What strikes the observer is that many religious items listed by UNESCO very much resemble the colorful and “exotic” traditions and rituals observed by early anthropologists and folklorists. However, even in this field, one should not exaggerate consistency, as heritage selection often operates in an opaque manner (Brumann 2012). The more one studies the UNESCO system, the more one realizes that the decisions made are incoherent, and sometimes contradictory. Thus, instead of considering opposed views of experts and locals, as suggested by Karlström, let us look at heritage planners as part of much broader chains of interconnections. In conservation programs, mediations are as diverse as between nongovernmental organizations, private investors, international experts,

New Directions in the Study of Cultural Transmission

Cultural transmission is a hot topic today. In this article, I show how it haunts the foundations of anthropology and continues to animate many contemporary debates. I suggest, for scholars interested in Intangible Cultural Heritage, new directions to better explore its workings.