[The following notes of oral exchanges at the session were taken to help identify speakers and otherwise facilitate review of audio recordings. They have not been compared to those recordings and should be understood to provide only a sense of what was said. In other words, they are not formal transcripts, and they may contain inaccuracies.] Speakers are identified by their initials in the transcript. For a full list, click here. Roundtable 1: Recap and Clarification of Important Questions DS – I am concerned about roundtables for these reasons. [I want us to] pick up on issues and develop them. To think about the journal, [a] vague notion. [This is an] important aspect of the way the committee designed [the conference(?)]. The idea was that at the sessions, we would pick areas for which there could be a lot of different things said and follow up with roundtables and beyond. The practical context is getting funding. The idea [presented was] that [we would be] discussing broad topics and follow[ing] up with roundtables. The foundations were uncomfortable – way too big; don’t like “discussion”. They talk about metrics, actions, deliverables, objectives, results. If there will be any funding for a second conference, we need deliverables. Alex will follow up in terms of the journal. There was one funder who might fully fund a second conference that was unwilling to fund this conference because I wasn’t able to show metrics. My attempt [to that funder] was: I will show you what we did but I can’t until after the conference. If we deliver, we can have another conference in 2-3 years. Turn over to chairs with suggestions about where to go: topic papers, special issues. My goal to sell to the foundation: we are coming up with a new agenda for the field. For example, the Bellagio declaration for IP – a “new agenda” is foundation talk. I don’t think a new agenda – with so many beginning ideas, fields – is likely. But that is the overall goal. My example is the last point that was made this morning: a comparison between cultural diversity and biological diversity – a lot that can be done with that analogy if it is thought out. CC – There is one aspect which is difficult. I don’t know what deliverables would be. DS – What ideas have been generated here? CC – So they would accept that? DS – I am not too interested in satisfying some funder. But what we think is important. Developing biological vs. cultural diversity in an article would bring results to the field. LP – What you’ve given us is a subject. Do they want to know whether we will write a paper, set up a working group, etc.? DS – That’s what we should figure out – what processes do we want? CC – I would like more specificity and understand what we’re talking about in a less theoretical way. How would this work? Ratify? Implement legislation? What impact [will it have]? And how will it play out on the ground in, for example, Mexico or Guatemala? Cultural origins has been a powerful way of thinking – but the trajectory in Mexican history is something we haven’t considered. How has it changed, how is it reacting to clarity – the loss of what used to be in Mexico a major intellectual goal. SK – I’m not worried about deliverables. We’ll be able to find funding. More important is what we want to do with the journal. What other kinds of projects we might want to do. If we focus on the journal, fine; another meeting with intellectual focus. But there are a number of things we might do. First, a book series. If we could commission short books on any number of subjects – by one person or a collection of essays. This is an interesting enough area to find a publisher. Second, the society for cultural economics. There is overlap [with us]. Perhaps we can have a meeting between the two societies to talk about one discreet element, for example, the economics of IP and its impact on cultural diversity. CC – Could you explain the actual focus of the journal and group with an example? SK – [The society is] odd because it is not respectable for economists to study art. [Members] tend to be older people who can get away with it. Discrete things – for example, the industry of people who write about art auctions and what the auction process produces in terms of value. [They are] interested in theoretical truths perhaps as opposed to cultural content. PO – Culture professions regard cultural economists as suspect. SK – Sometimes rightfully. PO – A Bellagio declaration would bring the society into prominence. But Bellagio never had follow-up. We could have a lead-up in the journal on an aspect, for example, terminology, and follow-up. CC – What is significance of a declaration? NS – Whole range of things – depends on what umbrella [there is]. AB – Economic charter. NS – Free-standing declarations, principles, charters – a focus on an uncertain subject and try to grasp some international consensus about what is generally in the parameters of the good. For example, the Vienna charter established what people generally think are good practices. It is not enforceable but [it provides] a general framework. I came into this through antiquities trade with the problem of looting, etc. Still a great feud between, for example, the AIA that refuses to allow unprovenanced [objects] and the other side. A new statement could create a new standard about reasonability in our world. But [I want to] caution against a self-appointed group of experts coming out self-righteously with […]. I’ve been working on standards of interpretation – need some framework that acknowledges [them] within some organization. The society itself doesn’t have sufficient standing to do it on its own. But we could work within IKOMOS, UNESCO, etc. All these subjects are super contentious. [There is] more and more stuff in contest. The society needs to take a stand – have some position – perhaps only to find a consensus. DL – I disagree. This path will kill the group. What makes this group unique is the collegiality between diverse backgrounds and the combination of scholarly work and activism. The purpose as I understood [it] was to find a way of continuing as a group. We are a society, not just a journal. We shouldn’t be in the business of imposing guidelines or seeking cooperation with international organizations. Our virtue is that we’re able to discuss, take home ideas and contacts. These are unique [virtues]. Most of our organizations are too big for this collegiality. [Our] strength is smallness and intimacy. Discussion, not guidelines, rules, definitions. MC – It is important how this conference is reflected in journal.
It could be – with some work – an account of issues under
question. [We could] highlight what are the most controversial. Make
a real substantive text. Make [it] deliverable and readable. LR – There are practical things that we
can do for an impact. We’re
a society. Get the brand name on things. I want to have a seminar at
the Wilson Center about this document. Bring in fellows who are there,
who have never heard of the Society, and put on the announcement that
it was organized by the International Society for Cultural Diversity.
Call
it an outreach program; tell funders that we did it on our own initiative.
For the journal: invite folks in an outreach way to contribute to the
discussion. Brand it, show it to the people, demonstrate expansion and
activity. You tell the funders: we’re not cost-free, we spent time,
efforts, branded it. If out of the journal or discussion, a group comes
up with something in declaration-form, that’s fine; the society
itself doesn’t have to do that. MC – I would organize this discussion at GW and put Cultural Property Society on the masthead. CL – Our working group on the persistence of antiquity – several focused on nationalism and technology – we could find a seminar situation and invite people from the Society. AB – [We should] focus on goals. He wasn’t interested in getting to Bellagio in three years. For the sake of the diversity of views and ideas, perhaps it is bad to produce one document. But it would be valuable for us to reflect on what we discuss – what are pressing issues – we agree on this even if we don’t agree on solutions. Focus on those topics in outreach efforts. Let’s talk about broad issues before we get into what institutions would sponsor. NS – The question is not the issues or even doing largely academic meetings. [Rather, we should be] reaching out to spheres where such issues are not even acknowledged. AB – Absolutely. NS – In the EU, there is an enormous infrastructure of cultural managers. Their work is rigidly determined from the accepted structure for heritage – this is 19th-century; it does not respond to new situations, etc. These people are in control in Europe. There is a genuine outreach function. [We should] solicit real world case-studies and problems from people who are working in the field. Something in Brussels that we’re doing – solicit not abstracts but problems from the real world. The combined expertise of the Society can enlighten people on the ground that there are theoretical approaches to problems at same time as we ground ourselves. Where the academy meets governments. We need to become international, not just say it. HP – Tokyo institute [and names of other research institutes – too fast] – good publications of problems on the ground. We should exchange journals with them. The Tokyo Institute has conferences every other year on heritage issues. We’re all well-connected. If we could come up with list of research institutions, funding resources, bilingual key scholars. I would like to get more prominent people who are working in these areas. The problem of Beijing being bulldozed for 2008 Olympics. The Toyota foundation has a great database of all the monuments being destroyed on way to Tibet. [We can] enhance standing by contacting institutions. Email me a list and I will send it Daniel. DS – Some of the pressing issues. What issues came up in course of the four topic sessions that people are interested in following up on? [These have been] good ideas about what the society might do to get recognition. What are the substantive ideas? RH mentioned an informal idea with respect to stewardship. RH – I had asked CL to talk more about the relation between education professionals and preservationists in the museum. The issue of how conservationists’ control of an object made it hard for curator to do imaginative things with the object. CL – The very terms of museum stewardship make it difficult for an institution to realize its interpretive ends – because of the severe restrictions that conservation practice and public education put on that – it is hard to express nuance. RH – It is interesting that one kind of specialist who constrains work is the technical-expert master of object. The other specialist who is equally constraining is the education specialist. Their expertise is not technical but bureaucratic. A lot of people here have said culture is always particular and always diverse. But in manifestos, a way of bureaucratizing cultural diversity which seems antithetical to idea of cultural diversity as human creativity that is not defined by reference to rules. It is interesting then that an interpreter is constrained by educators’ imposition of bureaucratic routines and ideas about what counts as education. Who has more power technical experts or educational? CC/CL [together] – Technical. RH – our first agreement! KS – We can’t treat with international conventions without petrifying or even destroying upcoming cultural activity. For example, impressionism was opposed to traditional culture. If there were legal restrictions, it would have had a hard time flourishing. RH and that has been a dominant tension in 2 days of discussion. Everyone wants disempowered people to have a chance. But then we get stuck – once you legislate – if they help or not. DL – We haven’t said that every group should have rights. RH – We’re not talking about groups but shifting social formations. DL – This is an implicit essentialization – that a group is a group that agrees within itself. AB – […] RH – In these terms … DL – This is something we didn’t address. LR – Issues I want to see pursued: the U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples is dead. Perhaps its problem was mixing [in?] sovereignty. Can we factor that out? Is there something distinctive about indigenous peoples for cultural property? I am interested in how cultural property can be hurtful to others. How does one deal with that? The confederate flag: [should it be] on the state capital or in a museum? What would be issues to spot for potentially insulting cult property? I would like see more discussion about the uses and misuses of analogy and metaphor. It makes all the difference. I have a hard time with students to get them to think outside of a dominant metaphor. For example, dominant playing field. AIDS virus – research comes out differently depending on whether we see it in war-like terms or as locks and keys. [Return to Synopsis] PO – I want discussion on terminology: safeguarding, protection; property, heritage. Implications of creating new terminology. Where does the different use of terminology take us? CC – How does it translate? PO – Yes, different things all together. DL – Abstract topics intermingle and are hard to get a hand on. The diversity convention is so soft because of lack of convention; nothing that follows from it. But PF and MC on how important it was for minority groups to be able to hold national government to it. Now that there is some sort of standard, it is hard to put down the minority because you have signed the treaty. How interesting that a treaty with no force has force in defining culture about cultural diversity. How do you put your finger on that back-and-forth? LR – Connect to deliverables. If we go to a quarterly, a section of the journal – call it impact. We see what these things look like on the ground in different countries. For example, if the convention is treated differently in Latin America vs. the Commonwealth. People report in as impact. As an organization we aren’t monitoring but reporting back. I will ask my colleague to keep an eye out and maybe write a short thing for the journal. CC – No one has addressed cultural property and the 1970 convention – how effective, what has happened to relationship between our country and the country with which we have an agreement and what has happened within our country? It is very dramatic. Also we need to be less Eurocentric – for example, Latin America. AB – What are the effects of a bilateral convention? Very similar to LR. Stewardship as a bundle of rights vs. property as bundle of rights. If stewardship is a different bundle, what are those rights? Is this a different way to promote museum function? CL – Entail restrictions but also open new dialogue. AB – The case of Elgin marbles. What if you could convince the British Museum not to be owners but stewards of the marbles? What if it had to consult the Greeks about how the marbles are displayed in the museum? DL – And consulting them again and again and again. AB – Yes, perhaps [it would be] difficult but [it could] open new doors. DL – (a) The rights and wrongs of what is illicit and local goods – the problematic of worth in antiquities market. (b) That creation and destruction are part of the same process of change – what is preservation, what does it enhance, etc.? LP – The persistence of respect for antiquity in deep structures – perhaps something biological. Knowledge handed on from elders, etc. Now we get information from new sources. I would like to see it explored. RH – It fits well with biological diversity vs. cultural diversity. KS – Nationalism vs. internationalism. Can national cultures be protected by international practices like loans? Can we move toward an international world while protecting nationalism? There must be a compromise between internationalism and the idea that every Greek object must be kept in Greece. MC – Footnote: if we make indigenous people a problem, we should recognize that there is a different category: national minorities have similar problems but they are not indigenous, which raises new questions. For example, Turks in Germany. CC – […] NS – Something we missed in discussion this morning. The law in France that disallows the hijab in public. LR – In public schools. NS – Yes, but in the direction of controlling the diversity of culture. CC – That reaction is inevitable. HP – That was guestworkers. DS – We’re ready for lunch. There is one point I would like to make: if these topics are going to be clarified, it is up to us. PT – Two things. We should question the underlying values expressed here – even the raison d’être of the Society – why preserve? Cultures change – we’ve seen this from the perspective of evolution and natural selection; consider also what RH was saying about destruction being culture as well. Anyone who has read William Gibson can imagine how culture evolves, changes, hybridizes, and remains culture. [Return to Synopsis] Also, with reference to the Gastarbeiter – Muslims in Europe raises the question of religion and terrorism and the interests that the state has in preserving itself against destructive minorities. I am surprised that this has not come up once. It is the issue of the day. [Return to Synopsis] [These were the questions that AB wrote on the board during the roundtable:] • Where
do
different
terminologies
take
us? [Observation
by PT: as this list reflects, it seems like most of the “important
questions” that came up are of the sort that
would be suggested, and worked through, by the non-legal academics of
the group. The society might want to think harder about what questions the
lawyers
think are pressing.] |