Research Seed Grant | 2003-2004
Making Heritage Pay: Social and Economic Empowerment in South Africa
by Lynn Meskell (Anthropology)
This project examines the role of the past in present day South African society. As the country recovers from politically institutionalized racism and an educational policy of historical revisionism, the notion of heritage is increasingly turned to as a collective remedy. Interdisciplinary research will be undertaken on the political economy of cultural heritage and its deployment for socio-economic advancement. The South African government has targeted cultural heritage as a vital component in redressing the ills of the apartheid regime and similarly crucial to the creation and sedimentation of African identities in the present. This study is the first to chart the range of negotiations between individuals, communities and organizations as they work towards a strategy of economic empowerment, nascent nation building, and the presentation of a new South Africa and its cultural heritage to a burgeoning tourist industry. President Mbeki's recent rhetorics around the 'African Renaissance' are a clear example of this strategy to revive, regenerate, and reconstruct the past in the present, for both national and international audiences. Yet while heritage has been touted as a wellspring for national pride and for economic growth in South Africa, the enabling infrastructure and linkages made between resources and eventual outcomes remain tenuous. This project is positioned at the nexus of archaeology, anthropology, development studies, intellectual property, tourism, and government. At this unique juncture in South Africa's modern history, it is essential to observe and analyze this unfolding and be part of the consultative process. In this volatile context, where trauma and negative memory are constant, we are poised at a moment where the past is present.
