Heritage of display: interculturality and cultural diplomacy in the 2010 UNESCO falconry file

ABSTRACT

In 2010, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) led 11 countries to inscribe falconry onto the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative List. The aim of this article is to examine one of UNESCO’s leading principles, interculturality, through the analysis of the processes that led to the first multinational inscription of falconry. It seeks to delineate, through the study of a multinational file, how the principles of interculturality were understood and implemented both by the countries and communities involved, and how falconry came to fit into them. Using the concept of cultural diplomacy, it tries to measure the scope of interculturality in the evaluation of the relations between communities, the national States, and the UAE as the leader of the candidacy.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO
• Intangible Cultural Heritage
• falconry
• multi-nationality
• interculturality
• cultural diplomacy
• United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Aknowledgement

I would like to thank Maria Gindhart, Associate Director and Associate Professor of Art History from the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University, for having had the patience to read over my article and for her most valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I here give the exhaustive list of the participating countries, year by year. 2010 file: United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Mongolia, Morocco, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syrian Arab Republic. 2012 file: United Arab Emirates – Austria – Belgium – Czechia – France – Hungary – Republic of Korea – Mongolia – Morocco – Qatar – Saudi Arabia – Spain – Syrian Arab Republic. 2016 file: United Arab Emirates, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syrian Arab Republic.

2. Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention. Accessed May 2017.

3. Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (June 2008), https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/ICH-Operational_Directives-2.GA-EN.pdf. Acessed November 2017; Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (June 2010), to be downloaded on https://ich.unesco.org/en/directives. Accessed November 2017; Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (June 2012). to be downloaded on https://ich.unesco.org/en/directives. Accessed November 2017.

4. Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (June 2008), pars. 3 and 20. https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/ICH-Operational_Directives-2.GA-EN.pdf. Accessed November 2017.

5. Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (June 2012), par. 34.

6. Statistics given on the IAF website. http://www.iaf.org/members.php. Accessed october 2017.

7. Interview of P.C, member of the ANFA, on 13 October 2015.

8. Interview of P J, president of the ANFA, on 5 August 2010.

9. http://www.iaf.org/. Accessed January 2017.

10. The 2008 inscriptions have a special status, since the 2008 lists incorporate practices that belonged to a programme named ‘the masterpieces of intangible cultural heritage’, established before the representative and urgent safeguarging lists.

11. Novruz is a ceremony marking the beginning of the New Year. The file was presented by Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan,Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

12. http://www.wam.ae/en/news/emirates/1395228805402.html. Accessed January 2017.

13. UAE Interact is a web journal giving both news and background information on the UAE. http://www.uaeinteract.com/docs/UAE_hailed_for_its_role_in_inscribing_falconry_with_UNESCO_Intangible_Heritage_of_Humanity/43442.htm. Accessed January 2017.

14. C. K., French Ministry of Culture meeting on ICH, May 2009.

15. Interview of P.C, member of the ANFA, on 13 October 2015 and interview of P. J. in August 2009.

16. Interview of P.C, 13 October 2015.

17. Interview of P.C, 13 October 2015.

18. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/mpe/ethno_spci/pdf2/courjaret_fauconnerie.pdf Accessed January 2017.

19. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/mpe/ethno_spci/pdf2/courjaret_fauconnerie.pdf. p. 9. Accessed January 2017.

20. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/mpe/ethno_spci/pdf2/courjaret_fauconnerie.pdf. p. 12. Accessed January 2017.

21. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/mpe/ethno_spci/pdf2/courjaret_fauconnerie.pdf. p. 13. Accessed January 2017.

22. UNESCO ICH rules changed in 2016. Until then, the inscriptions that had been examined several times, due to the addition of new contries, were available on the UNESCO ICH website under the heading of the leading country, classified per year. In 2016, it was decided that each new inscription definitely replaced the previous one, and therefore, previous inscriptions were deleted. The original text of the first candidacy file can be now found on a website dedicated to falconry heritage on http://www.falconryheritage.org/uploads/itemUploads/2575/3-%20ICH-02-2010-EN-ver-01.pdf (accessed January 2017).

23. http://www.falconryheritage.org/uploads/itemUploads/2575/3-%20ICH-02-2010-EN-ver-01.pdf, criterion R3 on safeguarding measures, section b, p. 15–16.

24. “Je soulignais […] que pour éviter de faire face à la réalité, l’idéologie de l’UNESCO s’abritait trop facilement derrière des affirmations contradictoires […] en s’imaginant qu’on peut surmonter par des mots bien intentionnés des propositions antinomiques comme celle visant à « concilier la fidélité à soi et l’ouverture aux autres », ou à favoriser simultanément « l’affirmation créatrice de chaque identité et le rapprochement entre toutes les cultures ». (Lévi-Strauss 1983, 15, my translation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sylvie Grenet

From 2006 to 2017, Dr. Sylvie Grenet worked at the French Ministry of Culture as research manager for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), where she was in charge of the national ICH Inventories as well as UNESCO files. She is now on research leave and preparing a post doctoral degree in anthropology at the University of Aix-Marseille in France.