Keynote Spotlight
Please enjoy this interview with scholar and ACHS 2022 Keynote Speaker Janet Blake, as a preview of what’s to come at the upcoming conference in Santiago de Chile…
Janet Blake is Associate Professor in Law at the University of Shahid Beheshti, Tehran. Since 1999, she has worked closely with UNESCO on the development and drafting of the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Convention, including acting as Rapporteur to the two Restricted Drafting Group meetings that developed the First Preliminary Draft of the Convention in 2002, and co-authoring the recent review on its implementation for UNESCO. She is the author of International Cultural Heritage Law (OUP, 2015), Commentary on the UNESCO 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ILA, 2006), and co-editor (with Lucas Lixinski) of The 2003 UNESCO Intangible Heritage Convention: A Commentary (OUP, 2020). Her forthcoming book A Practical Guide to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: Interpretation and Practice, will be available from Edward Elgar (UK) in late 2022 or early 2023.
ACHS: Your work on all things “ICH” has been highly instrumental, and your scholarship is essential reading for so many. What brought you to specializing in global heritage law and working with UNESCO?
This was quite a journey, since my first degree (M.A. Honours) was in Classics and I had initially been keen on pursuing further studies in Ancient History. However, developing a chronic illness at that stage of my life meant that I had to delay those plans for a few years and I developed an increasing interest in International Law. One day, I was browsing the ancient history and archaeology section of the university library at St. Andrews when I saw the book that changed my life: Law and Cultural Heritage by Lyndell Prott and Patick O’Keefe. I suddenly saw that my background in Classics could form the basis for pursuing a research degree in International Law, and I was lucky enough to meet my future PhD supervisor, Professor Iain Scobbie, who was brave, or foolish, enough to take the risk to accept me as his student for an LLM degree (convertible to a PhD). I ended up writing my PhD on the legal protection of underwater archaeological sites and remains.
During my PhD research, I spent one year as a Programme Specialist in the Cultural Heritage Division of the Council of Europe, which gave me invaluable experience of working in the intergovernmental context. I then arranged a research visit to UNESCO to meet Lyndell Prott and discuss the work then being done on what would become the 2001 Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage. Again, chance intervened in that Professor Prott was unexpectedly called away on mission and I ended up meeting Noriko Aikawa, who then headed up the Unit dealing with ICH. During our fruitful meeting, she asked me to prepare a short briefing document on the 1989 Recommendation on Traditional Culture and Folklore and related documents.
“… I have always felt that my inter-disciplinary background (in a cultural and then a legal field) has been a crucial aspect of what I do professionally…”
Following this, I was invited to take part in (and act as Rapporteur for) the conference held at the Smithsonian in 1999 to review the 1989 Recommendation and later, to prepare a technical and legal study for UNESCO on whether to develop a new standard-setting instrument in the field of ICH. Subsequently, I was the Rapporteur for the non-governmental drafting group that prepared the preliminary draft of the 2003 Convention. Today, I remain involved in the implementation of the Convention, preparing documents for the Committee as an independent expert, and as a Global Facilitator for capacity-building. Most recently, I have also become engaged as a member of an Iranian NGO accredited to the Convention which has been a new and rewarding experience for me. I would like to mention that I have always felt that my inter-disciplinary background (in a cultural and then a legal field) has been a crucial aspect of what I do professionally, as has my life choice of marrying an Iranian and spending the past 22 years living and working in Iran!
Left: Traditional Armenian quilting © Janet Blake. Right: Traditional carpet-weaving in Gorgan (northern Iran) © Janet Blake
ACHS: Having entered into force over a decade ago now, what contributions would you say the ICH Convention has made, and what challenges does it face?
The 2003 Convention, which entered into force in 2006, is now in the late teenager/early adult phase of its life and so enjoys the interesting duality of this condition: It is quite immature in some ways, while also enjoying some surprising maturity in others. It is very difficult to quantify the contributions of the Convention – not all of which are positive, as your question implies – since it is now hard to imagine the world without it. It is also, without doubt, true that much of what is encouraged in terms of safeguarding measures and actions to be taken under the Convention are things that might well have happened even in its absence. However, the really important achievement of this treaty has been to raise awareness at all levels – governmental, societal and community – that this range of traditional practices, performances, knowledge and know-how exists, has a heritage value and deserves both official recognition and support. This, then, has provided a formal framework in which national policies are set that provide support for a range of measures for safeguarding this heritage and, importantly, for facilitating the safeguarding activities of bearers and their communities. In some countries where there is a high degree of communication between bearers and government officials, this has led to the development of extremely innovative and creative approaches that have definitely benefited from official support in both financial and moral terms. On a larger scale, there is no doubt that the Convention also articulates in very practical terms the international goals and priorities relating to human (cultural) rights, the importance of cultural diversity and sustainable development.
Of course, no treaty framework is ideal since it is based on the agreement of States and primarily reflects their perceived interests. There is also great potential for tension within a treaty dealing with a heritage that is not only embedded in cultural traditions of diverse groups but also, often, of ethnic and cultural minorities. At the same time, the high degree of participation by bearers and their communities that the Convention requires will always be difficult to achieve in a primarily (inter-)governmental setting, though it is interesting to observe channels of communication for this developing that never previously existed. A further problem with the treaty has been with the international inscription of elements of ICH, which has tended to reflect a very governmental view of each country’s heritage (with a few honourable exceptions), where countries have sought to inscribe prestigious elements rather than the more typical ones envisaged by the Convention. More damaging, many Parties have expended a lot of money and effort on preparing nomination files rather than actually safeguarding this heritage in general and have, at times, engaged in competitive listing where serious regional disputes are being played out through heritage. The Secretariat to the Convention is also overwhelmed by the work that this and the international assistance mechanism require and its under-funding remains a major challenge to the operation of the treaty. As we know, older teenagers can be expensive to support and capricious in their desires! On balance, however, I firmly believe that that a world in which this Convention exists in order to empower ICH bearers to safeguard their heritage and, by extension, their ways of life is a better one than a world without it.
ACHS: Examinations of how ICH communities are involved with Convention implementation, and impacted by it, remain important and needed. What trends related to community participation have you seen?
This is a very difficult question to answer in any detail since I have not directly studied the trends in this regard, but I can make some general observations based, in particular, on my experience of conducting training workshops for national focal points in the Latin America and Caribbean region on the newly-established periodic reporting system. This is highly relevant since, for the first time, there is now a results-based monitoring and reporting framework (the Overall Results Framework or ‘ORF’) that requires States Parties to report on the degree of inclusivity, i.e. involvement of the communities, groups and individuals in various safeguarding activities such as identification, inventorying and providing educational programmes and how far their policies are inclusive. This speaks directly to the question of participation and so Parties are now being asked to address this question in their periodic reporting, which will feed into their work on the ground since it is not possible to gather the required data set without direct engagement with ICH bearers and related NGOs/CSOs. What was striking about the discussion during these workshops was how far implementing the Convention had already led to building participatory relationships between government officials and bearer communities in some countries, and how all the focal points (mostly government officers) felt strongly that these would be necessary for undertaking the reporting, and that this would establish very useful channels of communication and collaborations in the future.
Although this is a very partial view, I think it does speak to the fact that the operation of the Convention is, over time, leading to such participatory relationships being developed; a key point is that their existence actually makes the job of implementing the Convention easier for officials and they are now starting to see this. On the other hand, there remain many countries and sub-regions where this is less true and where, unfortunately, one of the main obstacles to participation is the mind-set of the academic experts who work with this heritage: Rather than acting as a bridge between government and bearer communities, they regard themselves as the sole experts and arbiters of what is ‘correct’ with regard to identifying, describing and safeguarding ICH elements. Here, then, we see the expert-driven approach for which the 1989 Recommendation was criticized and, sadly, still governs attitudes in many countries. For a real change in the level of participation achieved in implementing this Convention, work needs to be done on changing this mind-set among many anthropologists, ethnologists and other heritage experts worldwide. If this changes, it will feed directly into the heritage authorities and institutions and inform their practice. I believe that bodies such as ACHS have an extremely important role to play in this.
Left: Cooking stoves in Gilan Open Museum, Iran © Katherine Azami. Right: Traditional doll-making in Aloulak Village, Qazvin Province (Iran) © Katherine Azami.
ACHS: With respect to critical heritage studies in general, what areas do you feel are in most need of research and applied work?
First and foremost, we need to shift our emphasis from focusing on the ‘what’ of ICH – namely, the elements – towards the ‘how’ and ‘what impacts’ of safeguarding it. The Japanese Category 2 Centre, IRCI, conducted a review of research on ICH in the Asia-Pacific region between 2014 and 2018, and it was clear from this that research into safeguarding practices and their impacts on ICH elements and their cultural communities was poorly represented, with the bulk of research being conducted into ICH elements per se. Where there has been research conducted on the impacts of safeguarding and the implementation of the Convention, this has been heavily skewed towards the inscription of elements on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (not even those inscribed on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding or the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, possibly the most important of the three). This research has also tended to focus on criticism of the listing process and its impacts – which is, of course a legitimate criticism to make – and tends to miss the point that the possibility of international inscriptions has two main purposes: (1) to encourage Member States of UNESCO to become Parties to the Convention; and (2) to raise awareness, including among governments, of the importance of this heritage. I think it is fair to say that it has generally achieved both of these.
“First and foremost, we need to shift our emphasis from focusing on the ‘what’ of ICH – namely, the elements – towards the ‘how’ and ‘what impacts’ of safeguarding it.”
It is, however, a great error (one shared by many parties, unfortunately) to see the listing mechanism as the most important aspect of the treaty, which it is not. Part III, which sets out the range of safeguarding measures to be taken, in addition to those set out in Article 2(3), is the heart of the safeguarding model of the Convention and is where real achievements in securing the future viability of this heritage and its bearers can be seen. This is where I believe the focus of future research should be: examining what measures are being taken; what measures might be taken; how bearer communities themselves participate in this; and what impacts they have on the heritage elements and their bearers as well as the broader society. Another point I would like to make here is that the inter-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder character of ICH and its safeguarding mean that research needs to be both inter-disciplinary and to follow a model that includes a variety of voices and experience in a real sense. I think that the latter requirement may well mean that academic researchers have to re-think their approaches and even how they identify ‘expertise’. As a legal expert, I would add that there needs to be greater engagement from lawyers in this field and, in particular, readiness from our side, as well as that of cultural specialists, to undertake inter-disciplinary research projects. We each have a lot to learn from each other, and we need to find ways to escape from our disciplinary silos.
ACHS: Lastly, what can we look forward to from you?
As you mention in your introduction, much of my research and writing effort right now is devoted to preparing the manuscript for A Practical Guide to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: Interpretation and Practice, which will be published by Edward Elgar (UK) in late 2022 or early 2023. Having co-edited with Lucas Lixinski a very technical legal commentary on the Convention, I was interested in writing a more accessible book that focuses more on what people involved in implementing the Convention – be they members of bearer communities, government officials, scientific experts or others – can do to put it into practice. I hope that this book will be sound in its legal analysis while also providing more practical guidance, including through sharing experiences of safeguarding measures and actions from around the world. My other major ICH-related activity right now involves the Steering Committee of the ICH NGO Forum of NGOs accredited to the 2003 Convention, which involves much more practical engagement with fellow NGOs as well as a project mapping the expertise of the accredited NGOs. This is opening up new experiences for me and it is a great pleasure to get out of the ‘ivory tower’ of academia and work in a more practical way.
“For my keynote for the ACHS conference in Santiago, I would like to focus on the ways in which the Convention interacts with a larger international policy context of cultural diversity.”
For my keynote for the ACHS conference in Santiago, I would like to focus on the ways in which the Convention interacts with a larger international policy context of cultural diversity. This is, essentially, an expression of the important human rights character of this treaty, and includes parallel developments with regard to Indigenous rights that have taken place. I believe that the reason that this Convention has been so successful is that it speaks to these global (and local) aspirations in a way that a global heritage treaty has not done before. I also believe that the involvement of cultural specialists, especially anthropologists, at all stages of the drafting and implementation of this treaty has contributed towards its special character and greatly helped in developing the concept of cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialogue and respect on which it is built.