Globalisation and Cultural Heritage
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NWO
Globalisation
The processes of globalisation have been much debated in the past two decades. However, many of the contributions to this debate have been theoretical, notably with respect to the globalisation of culture and the position of cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the various publications devoted to cultural heritage and its institutions on a global scale tend to be fragmentary, and provide no substantial contribution to new insights into the background, development, and outcome of the relationship between globalisation and the way cultural heritage is preserved and consumed.
Globalisation is nowadays often used as a rather loose concept with various meanings. Applying it on a concrete example could contribute to a better understanding of what globalisation essentially means.
If we see the globalisation of heritage institutions as a process which is moving from the centre to the periphery, an unstoppable development spreading from the West to other parts of the world, then Western concepts of heritage and Western ideas on the appropriate action will ultimately determine the way people deal with the remnants of their past, to the detriment of indigenous ways of communicating with the past.
The various ways of preserving heritage which are customary in non-Western countries today, and the fact that Western-style heritage organizations exist alongside indigenous forms of heritage management, mean that a different perspective on globalisation is needed.
The variety of non-Western heritage institutions may be seen as the outcome of a process of creolisation or hybridisation. Nevertheless, the term hybridisation suggests the equivalence of the different cultural practices that have contributed to the new hybrid, and proceeds on the assumption that those new practices and products are equally attractive and accessible to audiences in the West and the non-West.
The exchange of cultural goods and services between producers in one country and consumers in or from other countries may take various forms. In some post-colonial countries, staged versions of indigenous culture exist alongside authentic forms of cultural heritage. These have a matching infrastructure. That infrastructure is neither identical to the original indigenous forms, nor a copy of Western heritage presentations, nor a mix of the two.
A better term to describe the interactions between cultures, heritage institutions and audiences could be 'contact zones'. The actual practices of handling and consuming heritage are often the result of new relations between existing institutions and audiences, rather than a combination or merging of old ones. The notion of contact zones makes it also possible to investigate the possible impact of non-Western practices on Western heritage institutions, which are presently being challenged to cater for parts of the national audience that have no cultural roots in the West.
In order to establish the relationship between globalisation and cultural heritage, it will be necessary to undertake a critical reading of the existing literature on these two subjects, to interview heritage professionals, and to carry out observations in situ.
