Ethnology
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Associated at the beginning with the desire to collect traces and testimonies of the so-called "popular", "traditional" or "regional" cultures (as of the most distant ones), ethnology was gradually involved in the policy of democratization of Culture. In particular to take into account the social dimension of Heritage, to make legitimate requests from groups that did not have the right to a city before, as well as certain forms of local demand in the historical context of decentralization.
One of the tasks of the adviser in charge of this field, without falling into excessive relativism, is therefore to promote somewhat changing assessment criteria (1). With reference to other meanings of the notion of culture, highlighting the richness and complexity of meanings specific to less valued genres, focusing on the question of the reception of works, their consumption very differentiated according to the environments or their modes of sharing radically transformed in recent decades (2).
The development of interest in ethnological heritage could be considerable, through a jumble:
- the safeguarding and restoration of rural built heritage or industrial heritage;
- the proliferation of eco-museums and "social museums";
- regionalist (or more widely anthropological) publishing;
- the success of traditional music and other "world music";
- the revival of traditional storytelling and the attention now given to oral sources, particularly through the collection of memory in many communities;
- the rediscovery of ancient know-how, both for traditional crafts and certain food products, or for the maintenance of landscapes;
- the place given to immigrant cultures or certain aspects of urban cultures;
- finally, what has been called, at the end of a recent UNESCO convention, the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
It will be understood that such a diffuse field of initiatives, which brings together the margins of former academic fields, without really acquired legitimacy, is not governed by recognition and support procedures, or even regulations as exists in many other sectors of culture. This kind of "ordinary" things or practices basically justifies attention only according to the recommendations or demands of the communities that remain depositaries, and by the effect of a "social demand" that continues to make them live.
The corollary is naturally that such manifestations cannot be fixed, that they are brought to recreate themselves permanently. To the point that others taking shape under our eyes justify an equal interest. (Situation obviously very different from what applies to the monument, the buried trace or the artistic treasure). Thus the approach consists above all here in an effort to study, that is to say to describe and understand, to analyze the changing meanings that can tie themselves around an element (3).
The task of the adviser, in these conditions, is to link the initiatives of researchers (academics, doctoral students, scholars or sometimes simple amateurs) and those of very varied cultural institutions: museums, archives, associations more or less specialized, in addition to local authorities, of course, including regional nature parks.
The celebration of this heritage in contact with a very wide audience consists mainly of publications, conferences, audio-visual documents and exhibitions.
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1 - The influence of ethnology has, moreover, often been criticized as a kind of distortion with regard to the requirements of "The cultural exception" (according to an interpretation of the Enlightenment in truth somewhat truncated).
2 - Be roughly the party that anthropologist Michel de Certeau had entitled in his time Culture in the plural, in a rather famous essay that had itself been commissioned by the Duhamel department to redefine the objectives of cultural policy.
3 - Its "patrimonialization" to resort to a neologism that ethnologists have largely contributed to spreading.
Contact
Nathalie Lice
Responsible for the promotion of heritage and architecture
Tel. 05 67 73 20 46
nathalie.poux[@]culture.gouv.fr
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