Heritage Pragmatics: Problems and Opportunities in Pursuing Decolonization

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

“Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Tuck and Yang remind us (2012). What does this call to action mean for heritage studies? This paper explores attempts at decolonizing cultural heritage management and research. First, tracing the ways coloniality has continued to influence management practices in Rwanda, the paper argues that decolonization in this context requires a practical approach to management change. Using this case study as a jumping-off point, this paper further argues for attention to the practical aspects of decolonizing heritage and heritage research: issues of management, as in the case study, but also research practices and funding. For example, the case study of research in Rwanda also raises the issue of navigating a thorny political context that complicates decolonial goals. In Rwanda and beyond, the paper also explores how the expectations of funding bodies can be profoundly mismatched both with the practical realities of decolonial research and with what decolonization means to people on the ground rather than to scholars. These pragmatic considerations affect outcomes and impacts in ways too easily left out of academic approaches to heritage decolonization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39012.0