12th November 2013
Professor Kristin Kuutma (University of Tartu, Estonia).
The politics of ‘heritage’, both tangible and intangible, makes this a topic of great contemporary relevance to anthropology. Organizations such as UNESCO are in the business of putting policy into effect that determines important aspects of local life and the classificatory way in which people, practices and places are officially known. Kritsin Kuutma provides a first-hand account of the bureaucratic processes by which decision are made concerning what a local ‘culture’, and its ‘members’, and its ‘traditions’ may be comprised of.