Multi-Ontological Dissonance and Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Practices: The Case of the Patios in Cordova

473 https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 Articles Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, Institute of Heritage Science, Spanish National Research Council (INCIPIT-CSIC), Avenida de Vigo sin número, 15704 Santiago de Compostela, Spain; e-mail: [email protected]; VictoriaQuintero-Morón, University Pablo de Olavide, Department of Anthropology, Psychology and Public Health, Carretera de Utrera, km. 1, 41013 Sevilla, Spain; e-mail: v[email protected] The contradictions embedded in the safeguarding practices of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding practices have been the focus of analysis for the last couple of decades. In addition, the positioning, roles of scholars and their dilemmas are commonly analysed as a dual polarization: those scholars who analyse and criticise ICH regimes from the outside; as opposed to those who participate with a critical academic perspective in ICH safeguarding practices. This article adopts a different approach and proposes the concept “multi-ontological dissonances”. By this term, we refer to the simultaneous ontologies of ICH that take place both in the different actors involved in ICH heritage regimes and in the safeguarding instruments themselves. We analyse three levels of dissonances: various models and concepts of ICH coexist in the practices and discourses among different ICH researchers/specialists; among the safeguarding instruments and the researchers and even inside a single researcher/specialist. The case of the Fiesta of the Patios in Cordova will be used as an example of the multi-ontological dissonances in safeguarding practices. Keywords: intangible cultural heritage, ontologies, dissonance, Patios in Cordova, Spain How to cite: Sánchez-Carretero, C., Quintero-Morón, V. (2021). Multi-Ontological Dissonances and ICH Safeguarding Practices: The Case of the Patios in Cordova. Slovenský národopis, 69(4), 473–486, DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 1. INTRODUCTION As researchers “in” intangible cultural heritage (ICH), but also as participants in ICH heritage-making processes – or in research “for” heritage, to use the expression of Jean Davallon (2010) – our work and ourselves are crossed by and embedded in many 4 69 • 2021 ARTICLES Multi-Ontological Dissonances and ICH Safeguarding Practices: The Case of the Patios in Cordova CRISTINA SÁNCHEZ-CARRETERO, VICTORIA QUINTERO-MORÓN DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 © Ústav etnológie a sociálnej antropológie SAV © 2021, Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, Victoria Quintero-Morón. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons 474 Sánchez-Carretero, C., Quintero-Morón, V. 2021. Slovenský národopis, 69 (4), 473–486 dissonances. In this article, we wish to reflect on how anthropologists and heritage professionals relate to the highly successful ICH category promoted by UNESCO. Based on the case of the Fiesta of the Patios in Cordova, in Spain, we question how experts negotiate this complex landscape of innovations, successes, expectations and unintended effects. In Spain, the success of the ICH paradigm is clear: Spain ranks second in Europe in terms of the number of practices included in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (the ICH List) and the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices (RGSP), totalling 20 elements across both lists.1ICH initiatives have great popularity in Spanish mass media and there are increasing demands for the recognition of ICH-type practices, driven by a wide range of social actors (Santamarina Campos, 2013). ICH success has also led to the emergence of new legislation and management systems that shape what some authors have called a national or regional “heritage regime”, one that is influenced by UNESCO but with its own particularities (Bendix, Eggert, Peselmann, Eds., 2012; Kuutma, 2012). In this context, we ask ourselves what consequences this process may have on the professional performance of ICH specialists and scholars. Several studies focus on the dichotomies between professionals who relate to a classical paradigm of heritage and those who adopt a critical or constructivist paradigm (Gentry, Smith, 2019; Poulios, 2014; Winter, 2013). In the case of ICH, even if the critical perspective is extended among researchers (see for example Akagawa, Smith, 2019; Adell, Bendix, Bortolotto, Tauschek, Eds., 2015; Arizpe, Amezcua, Eds., 2013; Bendix et al., 2012; Cornu, Vaivade, Martinet, Hance, Eds., 2020), very few of them have a frontal position against the idea of “intangible heritage” (González Alcantud, 2018). Hafstein, for instance, positions himself in the middle of this anti-ICH or for-ICH dilemma, “I think the world is better off with the convention [for the Safeguarding of ICH] than without it” (2018b: 18). In the present work, we illustrate how numerous complex situations actually lead these heritage management professionals and actants – including safeguarding instruments – (Tauschek, 2015) towards various contradictions and paradoxes. This article advances the concept of “multi-ontological dissonances”, which refers to the simultaneous ontologies proper to both the different professionals involved in the ICH’s regime and the safeguard instruments. The concepts included in the 2003 Convention have been disseminated and heralded as innovative and transformative of the safeguarding rationale. Nevertheless, multiple analyses point to their paradoxical and conflictual nature (Akagawa, Smith, 2019; Coombe, Weiss, 2015; Hafstein, 2014; Kapchan, 2014; Sánchez-Carretero, 2012). The Convention’s success is linked to geopolitical interests, but also to new formats and language, in which terms such as diversity, equality, democratisation, participation, or community play an essential role. The 2003 Convention sought to move beyond inequities present in world heritage lists and attain new and greater levels of democratic and inclusive governance.2A significant portion of anthropological analysis of ICH 1 Globally, Spain ranks fifth with twenty inscriptions (seventeen on the ICH List and three on the RGSP, after China (thirty-five), France (twenty-two), Japan (twenty-two), and the Republic of Korea (twenty-one) (https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists?text=&multinational=3&display1=countryIDs#Spain). These figures do not include the inscriptions included in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (Urgent Safeguarding List). 475 https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 Articles focuses on the logics and changes brought about when a social practice is classified as ICH, and the effects of different management tools that are implemented under that label (e.g., Bortolotto, 2010; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004; Kuutma, 2012; Santamarina Campos, 2013). Some works emphasise its links with the concept of folklore and its limitations (Hafstein, 2008; Kuutma, 2019; Prats, 1997). Other essays reflect on the relationship between UNESCO designations and neo-liberal processes that do not directly benefit local communities (Bortolotto, 2010; De Cesari, 2012, 2020; Meskell, 2014; Santamarina Campos, Del Mármol, 2020). A number of studies show how the heritagisation of certain ICH-related practices and knowledge bring about cultural domestication, expropriation (Villaseñor, Zolla, 2012; Del Mármol, Santamarina Campos, 2019) or dispossession (Hafstein, 2014, 2018b; Jiménez-Esquinas, Sánchez-Carretero, 2018). Other studies question the reality of the new participatory and democratic paradigm proposed in the Convention, demonstrating how the effect is merely cosmetic or can open the door to neoliberal advance (Cortés-Vázquez, Jiménez-Esquinas, SánchezCarretero, 2017; Sánchez-Carretero, Muñoz-Albaladejo, Ruiz-Blanch, Roura-Expósito, Eds., 2019; De Cesari, 2020). We wish to understand how these contradictions operate within professional practices. In order to perform such an analysis, we believe that we cannot separate the actions and positions of heritagisation agents from the heritage regime of each heritage-making process. The regime refers to the set of rules, instruments and management traditions in which these processes take place. The professionals involved in ICH processes are situated within these frameworks or regimes. 2. HERITAGE PARADIGMS, ANALYTICAL CLOSURE AND MULTI-ONTOLOGICAL DISSONANCES When so-called “critical heritage studies” (Harrison, 2013) focus on the tensions described above, they tend to polarise two ends of a continuum: the classical or materialistic paradigm at one extreme and the constructivist paradigm at the other (Poulios, 2014; Prats, 1997; Smith, 2006). Following Davallon’s model, there would be the substantialist (or objectualist) paradigm on the one hand, and on the other, the constructivist or anthropological relativistic paradigm of heritage (Davallon, 2010). These two ends of the spectrum seem to oppose each other in patrimonial regime designs as well as in the management and positioning of diverse heritagisation actors (social movements, administrations, NGOs, heritage specialists). This article, however, adopts a different approach and advances the concept of “multi-ontological dissonances”. The term refers to the simultaneous ICH ontologies that can be found in both the different actors involved in ICH regimes, and the safeguarding instruments themselves. The different heritage models described by Davallon are present on an ontological level rather than on an epistemological level. That is, the adjective “multi-ontological” does not refer to different interpretations or epistemologies, but to the quality by which various realities can take place simultaneously 2 For a global analysis of the different legal models of ICH safeguarding, see Cornu et al. (2020). 476 Sánchez-Carretero, C., Quintero-Morón, V. 2021. Slovenský národopis, 69 (4), 473–486 (Henare, Holbraad, Waste, Eds, 2007). Thus, ICH models, depending on its ontology or existence, can be articulated in a triple axis of multi-ontological dissonances. On a first axis, several ICH models may be taking place within the same person. It may even be the case that a person is opposed to giving a status to the ICH as a category – i.e., that person does not believe it exists on an ontological level and defends that there is no essence, although the concept exists, of what is called ICH; but at the same time, that same person may, under certain circumstances, participate as an active agent in safeguarding the ICH and assuming the existence of the category. On a second axis, several models act simultaneously in situations where various people have different views of ICH. And the third axis refers to the dissonances between the management instruments themselves and between these instruments and the people who are in charge of implementing them. Table 1: summary of the proposed relationship between interpretive ICH paradigms and the ontologies they correspond to. Conflicting heritage ontologies also underlie various heritage paradigms. As represented in table 1, the substantialist paradigm considers heritage as a treasure and an exceptionality that is defined based on expert knowledge. The paradigm that we have coined as “of the 2003 Convention” is based on the idea that heritage is, to extend that it is recognised by a group as a reference of identity and of memory. Even though the 2003 UNESCO Convention paradigm overtake the substantialist model, both can take place simultaneously. Finally, the critical or constructivist paradigm is based on the idea that heritage either is, only in terms of the socio-political intervention that turns referents into symbols: or is not – i.e., it is essentially nothing, because it could be everything. To achieve the transmutation into “being”, elements of sacralisation such as nature, history, identity, etc. are employed and presented as consumable singularities and exceptionalities. 2.1. Cognitive Dissonances and Analytical Closure In psychology, the term “cognitive dissonance” refers to the theory elaborated by Leon Festiger (1957) that describes and explains the tensions that result from a lack of harmony within one’s system of ideas, beliefs and emotions. That is, it accounts for the anxiety that is generated when one believes simultaneously in contradictory things or when one’s actions are contrary to one’s beliefs. Our theoretical proposal consists of intersecting the axes of dissonance and the three ICH ontology paradigms (the critical 477 https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 Articles or constructivist paradigm, the 2003 Convention paradigm and the classical or substantialist paradigm). In addition, we suggest that the concept of “analytical closure” is useful for analysing the cognitive dissonances found in ICH safeguard models. This concept was used by anthropologist Charles Hale (2006) to understand the contradictions present in the works of applied anthropology on legal issues regarding the land claims of indigenous groups in Latin America. Our goal is to apply it to the field of heritage, following the path defined by Bigenho and Stobart (2018). Hale analyses the tension between activism on the one hand, – which requires an analytical closure, for example to produce evidence in a trial leading to the obtention of land rights of indigenous groups – and on the other, the theoretical criticism we are so well trained in for ethnographic work: Proponents of cultural critique, driven by the search for ever-greater analytical complexity and sophistication, object to the politically induced analytical closure that activist research often requires. The criticism that follows from this position of cultural critique is not that activist research lacks objectivity or that it has become politicized but that it is simplistic, unproblematized, and undertheorized. Both these differences – how political commitments transform research methods and at times prioritize analytical closure over further complexity – make activist research difficult to defend in an academic setting, especially when the arbiters of academic value tend to be proponents of cultural critique themselves (Hale, 2006: 101). The analysis of activism highlights the contradiction between the social and human science methodologies that critically analyse social processes and the demands of social actors who request such research: “anthropologists, geographers, and lawyers who have only cultural critique to offer will often disappoint the people with whom they are aligned” (Hale, 2006: 113). Yet it is not only applicable to understanding the cognitive dissonances of applied anthropology. In the case of ICH safeguard processes, Bigenho and Stobart have also used the concept of “analytical closure” to understand how: The expertise about culture that supports heritage-making processes, in a similar way, tends to be preferred as facts without ambiguities, interpretations with analytical closure. And therein lies the problem, because many academic analyses today are filled with complexities and resistant to analytical closure (Bigenho, Stobart, 2018: 3). In accordance with our proposed framework of analysis, the request for an analytical closure –necessary to move from theory to praxis – when trying to apply management instruments within any of the three paradigms (the critical, the 2003 Convention and the substantialist paradigms), is a major factor of the dissonances. We will analyse the dissonances of heritage professionals by exploring the tensions between the “analytical closure” required by ICH safeguarding on the one hand, and on the other, the elements of cultural critical theory that represent an important theoretical tool for specialists in anthropology. Also, the concept of “analytical closure” seems to be especially suited to understand our own dissonances as two women who place 478 Sánchez-Carretero, C., Quintero-Morón, V. 2021. Slovenský národopis, 69 (4), 473–486 ourselves within multiple paradigms at once. Despite our critical conception of the ICH safeguard models, both of us have implemented instruments based on the classical ICH paradigm that understand heritage as a “set of treasures” related to history or tradition. We have also observed similar contradictions during our research in various forums. 2.2. Conflicting Ontologies in the Fiesta of the Patios in Cordova Each May, gatherings take place around the shared patios of houses in the Historic Centre of Cordova. These communal, family or multiple-family houses open their doors and display their plants, flowers and ornaments. The residents and caretakers voluntarily “dress the patio” and “open the patio” to visitors, usually taking part in a contest held by the City Council since 1921. This ritual is referred to by Cordova inhabitants as “ir de patios” [going for a patio promenade]. It consists in visiting and admiring the patio work and plant know-how, speaking with the owners, sharing a glass of wine, strolling towards the next patio, listening to a song, meeting the residents ... in an enjoyable and festive atmosphere.3Since 2012, the Fiesta of the Patios in Cordova (FPC) is included in the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Various studies on the heritagisation of the FPC adopt a constructivist or critical perspective on heritage and address the socio-political and economic processes that surround the phenomenon (Hernández Ramírez, Quintero-Morón, 2020; Jiménez de Madariaga, Seño Asencio, 2018; Manjavacas Ruiz, 2018; Plata García, 2020; QuinteroMorón, Sánchez-Carretero, 2017). These very texts – some of which are authored by ourselves – reflect what we call the first axis of dissonances: those occurring within the same person. One of these dissonances is linked to the tension between the phenomenon’s analytical interest and what is desirable; that is, between a critical paradigm and a classical or substantialist one. In the case of the FPC, several articles allude to the ongoing “touristification” (Manjavacas Ruiz, 2018; Jiménez de Madariaga, Seño Asencio, 2018; Hernández Ramírez, Quintero-Morón, 2020), while resorting to the “spirit” of legislation and conventions to reaffirm that heritage should be a source of identity, memory or development. The same texts or authors thus confront a critical paradigm with a classical or substantialist paradigm. According to the critical paradigm, the UNESCO lists generate a trademark or element that shape tourist destinations and all the effects of transformation, dispossession and/or domestication that come with it. That is, the process is analysed as it unfolds, identifying actors and strategies. The subtantialist paradigm draws the attention to an ideal model of what heritage is, which is reiterated in preambles of laws and conventions: the benefits of heritage because it reaffirms identity, encourages local development, and promotes local knowledge. This dissonance sometimes reflects a pendular movement from critical positions to the positions of the 2003 Convention. Thus, nominally, a constructivist and critical view is maintained, in the articles and books mentioned above about the FPC, but when analysing the impacts of heritagisation, external causes are invoked, such as malpractice, ignorance or spurious interests that deviate from what would be the “true meaning” of 3 The fieldwork on which this case is based was conducted by Victoria Quintero-Morón discontinuously between 2016 and 2020. The specific people referred to have been anonymized. 479 https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 Articles heritage-making: the reaffirmation of identity as well as local development and empowerment. To this end, a sort of “analytical closure” takes place, establishing a series of disciplinary premises to address these phenomena and resorting to tautologies. For instance, an anthropologist explains in this way his/her analysis of the FPC, We approach [the analysis of the FPC] based on the festival’s anthropology, from the perspective of “the right to the city” (...) and its relevance across all orders of local social life and social and citizen participation. We adopt the approach of heritage anthropology (...) Fundamentally, the aspects that reflect identities and include spaces and activities, prioritising the value of the social use of heritage over the value of change in the markets. (Anthropologist, Victoria Quintero-Morón’s fieldnotes during the Patios de Córdoba Congress, 15 November 2018). The Fiesta of the Patios is a complex phenomenon that interrelates, among other elements, private houses, public spaces, gardening know-how, domestic management, modes of coexistence and reciprocity. It therefore involves multiple levels of management: housing, urban planning, festival management, citizen security, or tourism. And these various management levels are part of local debates around, what is locally known as “the right to the city”, urban speculation, employment and tourism. In this context, very different perspectives of various specialists come together, reflecting the dissonances of the second axis: that of different ontological heritage views between people in charge of safeguarding a certain ICH practice. In the case of the Patios in Cordova, one of the most visible dissonances is linked to the historicist or traditionalist conception of this heritage. The latter is faced with the a holistic approach to culture, which characterises it ontologically as a living element undergoing constant transformation, We approach [the FPC] ... adopting a dialectical vision that is subject to constant change. Intangible heritage cannot be understood as a fossilised product, anchored in an idealised past. Life changes and fortunately, heritage changes. A changing heritage that embraces tradition, change, and innovation. (Anthropologist, Victoria Quintero-Morón’s fieldnotes during the Congress of Patios in Cordova, 16 November 2018). According to this anonymized anthropologist, historians and architects project a fossilising perspective onto this intangible activity; or, using the wording presented in this article, many of them are professionals educated in a classical or substantialist heritage paradigm, that project their monumental vision onto ICH. The interpretation and dissemination of the FPC developed by these actors emphasises distant historical roots – such as Roman or Arab courtyards. However, what is safeguarded actually originates in early twentieth-century models (Colmenarejo, 2018). This recourse to history, tradition and authenticity serves as an argument to legitimise a given mode of selection and management of the courtyards. For example, an architect who works for the municipality stated that: (...) well, the interpretation centre of the festival was set up. That interpretation centre implied... (once the town centre was visited and the values and meaning for society and 480 Sánchez-Carretero, C., Quintero-Morón, V. 2021. Slovenský národopis, 69 (4), 473–486 for the caretakers of courtyards was recognised by UNESCO) also implied the drawing of a patio itinerary, but of “emblematic” [with an emphasis] patios, ones that represent the tradition. This means courtyards that are landmarks and that are emblems of tradition, because they are impregnated in some way by that tradition. (...) There are 3100 patio houses in Cordova. How many belong or are somehow included in this statement? Which ones reflect that tradition? Well, around eighty really do epitomise that tradition. (Architect employed by the city council, Victoria Quintero-Morón’s fieldnotes during the Patios de Córdoba Congress, 16 November 2018). Neither the Patio Contest, nor any local custom delimits which house-patios can take part in the festival: if they are geographically located within the city’s historic centre, and take care of plants with an ornamental sense, they are allowed to take part. The words of this architect reveal that urge for “analytic closure”: the recourse to historical depth, transmuted into tradition and a singularity or distinction, dressed up as “emblematic”. The speaker also refers to criteria that attempts to establish limits and disciplinary values: it must be “representative”, and have a temporal depth, in accordance with the discourse of the substantialist paradigm. Following this ontology, heritage is a treasure, it is valuable and therefore exceptional. Using the words of the architect mentioned above, “There are 3100 patio houses in Cordova (…) around eighty really do epitomise that tradition”. This ontological positioning is also linked to some difficulty in opening up the festival’s management to the participation of its protagonists. The latter are accused of vested interests, or “lack of knowledge”, because the “authentic” heritage can only be determined following some expert interpretation, which is none other than that recognised by UNESCO. The corollary of the words by this architect it that the criterion of authority is transferred to the institutional declaration itself and is subtracted from the fiesta’s depositories. During a debate, a resident patio caretaker, who opened to tourists all year round – something that was “against” the FPC declaration as UNESCO ICH from an historian point of view – was scolded in the following way: The declaration of heritage establishes it as a Fiesta. The Fiesta implies it cannot be all year round. Whoever visits a patio on other dates is seeing a very beautiful space, but has lost the sense of what the heritage declaration is. (...) It must be an interpreted visit, an interpretation during which the tourist is introduced to the discourse of the heritage declaration. (Historian employed by the City Council, fieldnotes during the Patios de Córdoba Congress, 16 November 2018). This dissonance illustrates one of the paradoxes of the 2003 Convention: on the one hand, its connection with the concepts of tradition – together with what is popular – (Kuutma, 2012; Bendix et al., 2012; Hafstein, 2018a) and its link with criteria of disciplinary authority; on the other, the “participatory shift” carried out by the 2003 Convention away from disciplinary authority (Bendix et al, 2012; Quintero-Morón, Sánchez-Carretero, 2017). Despite the frictions produced by the dissonances between people involved in safeguarding the ICH, we wish to emphasise here the third axis: that of the multiple ontologies found in the management instruments and between the specialists and these instruments. In fact, in the case of FPC, the anthropologists specialising in heritage and 481 https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0028 Articles who are involved in or analyse ICH management, are well aware of the innovations introduced by the 2003 Convention. The Convention’s paradigm framework establishes the “permanent recreation” component of cultural practices and the agency of the depositaries of such practices. The latter are indeed the ones who determine whether or not they are representative of their “identity” and memory. Without their participation – in accordance with the Convention – the know-how and practices cannot be considered heritage. However, the instruments that continue to be used in the heritagisation and subsequent management processes respond to static, disciplinary definitions and are subject to the criterion of expert authority (following a classical or substantialist paradigm). Lists, inventories, databases, dossiers and reports, etc. are complex instruments that are only handled by specialists; or only they understand them in depth and design them. The formats involved also determine a certain interpretation of the practices, giving prominence to some social groups over others within the local society itself. They also tend to fix one version and a specific moment of the ritual or the heritage-constructed activity. In short, they follow non-participatory processes in the radical sense of this term. In the case of FPC, to fit in UNESCO’s procedures, even the denomination changes from “Festival de Patios” to “Fiesta de los Patios”, to emphasize the ritual and popular dimensions of the event. Or as the local press said “the words [describing our feast] have been millimetrically adapted to UNESCO’s language” (Lozano, 2012). The version fixed by UNESCO, based on an idealized view of tradition and ways of life around the patio, is part of the current debate among the citizens of Cordova: those who think that UNESCO means a canon fixed and those who defend a broader interpretation. However, this debate is on the streets or in some specialized meetings, but it does not permeate the bureaucratic instances of management. The analyses of Fuensanta Plata García (2020) on the various administrative procedures for safeguarding and protecting the FPC point to a series of political and technical interests and errors in the UNESCO list candidacy procedure. This author underscores the participatory limitations present in the international organisation’s file and concludes by highlighting some of the effects of this safeguard mechanism: However, we are aware that recognitions are sometimes a double-edged sword, due to the possible changes that can be associated with goods and values. We have an illustration of this with the declaration of the Fiesta of the Patios. It has led to a massification that sometimes prevents the ritual from unfolding. Furthermore, it has generated tensions among neighbours and has affected the desire to participate, given the adverse conditions that are extraneous to the meaning and nature of the Cordova festival. (Plata García, 2020: 240–241) Gema Carrera Díaz (2017) used even stronger terms and alluded to how bureaucratic procedures can hide the political and economic interests of this UNESCO candidacy and its subsequent management. A meeting recently took place in which Sánchez-Carretero and Quintero-Morón participated together with various anthropologists and heritage specialists from Spain and Latin America. It was dedicated to the methodologies for safeguarding intangible