Awkward Relations and Universal Aspirations: Common Global Heritage in Ghana

Abstract

In this article, I investigate some of the artifacts that were involved in the reconstruction of a so‐called common cultural heritage site, a collaboration between the University of Ghana and the National Museum of Denmark. The ambition is to explore how these locally used artifacts evoked universal aspirations and thereby to discuss how the emergence of global heritage through different collaborative practices may be studied. Inspired by the work of Anna Tsing, I discuss the analytical possibilities of studying global heritage as “zones of awkward engagements”. I argue that instead of analyzing cultural heritage as a series of compromises, it is fruitful, at least analytically, to examine the awkwardness within the object of study—the creation of a cultural heritage site—as a continuous organization of parts and wholes, artifacts and words, the local and the global, in which a variety of stakeholders offer different universal aspirations.

Keywords:

• Awkwardness
• Artifacts
• Common heritage
• Universals
• Global
• Ghana

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Danish National Museum and all the people involved in the Frederiksgave project for letting me conduct fieldwork among them and for their comments on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to Beate Knuth Federspiel, Katja Kvaale, Helen Verran, Brit Winthereik, Bente Wolff, and to my supervisor, Kirsten Hastrup, for their support and comments. My thanks also go to the two anonymous reviewers and to the editors of this volume, Mads Daugbjerg and Thomas Fibiger, for their thought‐provoking comments and for sharing their enthusiasm for Globalized Heritage. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to Frida Hastrup and Gritt Nielsen for inspiring discussions and comments on various drafts of this article.

Notes

[1] Altogether, my fieldwork lasted for one year in the period from 2006 to 2009. For a variety of reasons, it ended being broken up into several stays in Ghana combined with fieldwork at the Danish National Museum, particularly while the exhibition was being set up (see also Note 10). Furthermore, I have been temporarily employed and I have thus had to negotiate a dual position within the project.

[2] The director of the museum used the term “warm colonies” in opposition to the “cold colonies” covering former Danish colonies such as Greenland, Iceland, and Faeroe Islands.

[3] See the article by Helle Jørgensen, this issue.

[4] A very similar point is made in Star and Griesemer’s article about “boundary objects” from 1989.

[5] For examples, masons, carpenters and painters, but none of the Ghanaian workers were trained in reconstructing cultural heritage.

[6] See the opening passage of the Venice Charter preamble: “Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age‐old traditions. People are becoming more and more conscious of the unity of human values and regard ancient monuments as a common heritage. The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity” (emphasis in original).

[7] For example, “straw”/“strå”, “inch”/“tomme”, “small‐big spand”/“lille‐stor spand”, “foot”/“fod”, “two feet”/“alen”, “acres”/“tønde”—the English names do not refer to the same quantity as the Danish one because they reflect different national standards.

[8] Like other former British colonies, UK standards are still the official standard in Ghana.

[9] Two feet being an independent ancient Danish unit called “alen”, in principle the measure from armpit to fingertip.

[10] For example, I bought furniture from the period, found printable posters able to tolerate the extreme climatic conditions, bought copyrights to old paintings, and assisted in the text writing and arrangements of the rooms and posters.

[11] http://www.info-ghana.com/joseph_project.htm

[12] See, for instance, the title of the joint article written for the National Museum’s annually published work “Frederiksgave: the National Museum reconstructs a slave plantation in Ghana” (Kurt‐Nielsen et al. 2008: 68).