Intangible heritage's uncertain political outcomes: Nationalism and the remaking of marginalized cultural practices in Turkey
Item
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Title
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Intangible heritage's uncertain political outcomes: Nationalism and the remaking of marginalized cultural practices in Turkey
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:fe340ae230a1:11149
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identifier
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11576
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Creator
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Aykan, Bahar,
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Contributor
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Patricia T. Clough
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Public policy
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Abstract
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The scope of cultural heritage management has been extended from tangible to intangible products in the few last decades. Debates surrounding the field of heritage raise fundamental questions about its inherent political character, calling particular attention to the ways in which heritage programs are dominated by nationalistic concerns. This study examines UNESCO-initiated intangible heritage making in Turkey. I focus on the complex relationship between heritage and nationalism, and the various levels of heritage making of marginalized cultural practices by national governments. This study shows that global heritage protection mechanisms have diverse and uncertain outcomes even in the same country. Yet when examined together, these outcomes reveal how heritage mechanisms nonetheless continue to be dominated by nationalist government interests. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic research, and content analysis of the UNESCO documents, I offer three case studies of recent heritage management programs in Turkey launched by the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government to safeguard marginalized cultural practices. These are the Mevlevi Sema ceremony, Nevruz festival, and Alevi-Bektasi Semah ritual. Radical differences in the Turkish government's methods of handling the heritagization processes of these three practices uncover a recent transformation in the official nationalist policy and discourse in Turkey, from secularist Turkish nationalism (of Kemalism) to Islamist Turkish nationalism (of the JDP). It is these shifting nationalist trends that make Turkey's intangible heritage practices not only an aspect of the politics of recognition (in the case of the Mevlevis), but also of nonrecognition (in the case of the Kurds), and misrecognition (in the case of the Alevi-Bektasis) regarding the extent these marginalized ethnic and religious identities comply with the current government's nationalist agenda.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
