ABSTRACT
With the emergence of the concept of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ in the last decade, a new set of human rights issues confronts heritage professionals. These relate to ‘cultural rights’; that is, group and individual rights to maintain those heritage elements that underpin cultural identity and to enjoy self-determination in cultural terms. There is a need to tread warily in dealing with intangible cultural heritage since a totally different set of ethical issues arises when seeking to protect ‘practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills’ – as the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage defines intangible heritage – for these heritage elements are embodied in people. It is not ethically possible to ‘own’ people in the way that we do the tangible heritage of physical places and artefacts, nor to buy and sell, destroy, rebuild or preserve them (Logan 2007a, 2008, 2009 in press). Although the Convention came into force fairly quickly with the requisite 30 states signed up by January 2006, a number of countries which have a strong record in other forms of cultural heritage conservation have misgivings about it and have so far refused to ratify it. The Convention refers to the notion of human rights as a way of shaping and, indeed, limiting the proposed intangible list. Frequently, however, cultural rights as one form of human rights and the one most directly linked to intangible cultural heritage, comes into direct conflict with other human rights, such as women’s rights, or the rights of children to be children rather than young labourers or soldiers. Conceptions of what is essential to cultural identity vary, of course, across time and from one part of the world to another. But, in some instances, opposing claims to cultural rights may be put forward by different groups locked in conflict in the same time and place. These complexities are discussed in this chapter through a case study of the hill-tribes of the Tay Nguyen or Central Highlands region of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Here claims to the community’s right to protect traditional culture, including local religious practices, clash with the right to religious freedom, especially at the individual level. Complicating the situation is the underlying resource competition in this part of Vietnam that
has boiled over recently into violent clashes with the authorities in 2001 and 2005. State-initiated population migrations into the central uplands have impacted upon Tay Nguyen land tenure rights and created major land use changes. The intervention of Christian sects and anti-communist overseas Vietnamese (Viet kieu), notably in the United States, adds to the brew. Unsurprisingly, the Vietnamese state reasserted its control over the Tay Nguyen area and people. Yet, at the same time the state also chose to embark upon a campaign to celebrate and protect one of the most distinctive features of the Tay Nguyen’s intangible heritage, its gong-playing culture. Given this complex and highly politicized context, what does the decision to inscribe the gong-playing culture mean? The chapter seeks to explicate this decision and, in so doing, raises questions about cultural heritage theory and practice that relate not only to Vietnam but to other parts of the world where there are clashes of rights claims.
