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Historic preservation: a new culture in old
worlds? ("Managing monuments as a national resource") Yudhishthir Raj Isar,
Director The Aga Khan Program -for Islamic Architecture at Harvard
University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This short paper poses an ingenuous
question: is not historic preservation itself a "new" culture in the "old"
world of non-Western societies? This perverse play on the metaphor in the
title of the VIII ICOMOS International Symposium - "Old Cultures in New
Worlds" - has been inspired by the precarity of heritage conservation as a
system of values, a mobilizing ideology, in the so-called Third World, a
precocity I have been freer to observe in my present position than in a
previous professional incarnation. My present responsibilities have in
effect brought me into closer contact with the broader debate on some of
the sociological factors affecting the conservationist enterprise than did
my hortatory mission as an international civil servant. While something
more than lip service is undoubtedly paid to the safeguard of highly
symbolic "monuments" in most countries, the record is significantly poorer
in the conservation, rehabilitation and re-use of entire historic
quarters, in the maintenance of a dynamic between the old and the new in
the built environment of our towns and cities. Yet broad societal
participation in historic preservation conceived in such environment
conscious terms is one of the characteristic features of "modernity" in
the cultures of Europe and North America. It is this widely shared urge to
preserve that has been responsible for the success of historic
conservation efforts in these countries. It's absence in the Third
World may be another sign of the deep cultural divisions between
traditional and modern sub-cultures, of the contrast between the values of
a small elite that has been socialized in the "specific, universal and
pragmatic orientations which typify "modern" culture" as opposed to the
patterns of tradition to which the vast majority remainstied.1 It suggests
that the champions and practitioners of historic preservation in any of
these would be protagonists of social, political and economic change,1
This opposition has been . developed in political science literature. See
Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A
Development Approach, Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1966, p.72906
somewhat awash in models, norms and procedures whose applicability in
non-Western contexts is increasingly open to question. Indeed the limited
scope o-f preservation efforts spearheaded by rather small segments o-f
the various national intelligentsias contradicts the optimistic rhetoric
that characterizes the discourse of the preservation movement. The
contradiction stares us in the face at every level. Suffice it to consider
here how little response there has been at the national level, to the
majority of Unesco's international campaigns for the safeguard of
monumental edifices or ensembles that are considered highly representative
of national history and identity and of "outstanding value to mankind."
When even such properties garner so limited a degree of popular support
then perhaps we are justified in questioning the very terms in which the
cause is outlined.In this perspective, the essentially sociological
questions posed below have a bearing on both national and international
resource mobilization for preservation in these countries. What are
these questions?
From
international.icomos.org... |
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Charles Buki
cornerstonesinc.org/
preservationnation.org
achp.gov/
historicpreservation.gov
charlesbuki.com
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