World Heritage on the Ground

Ethnographic Perspectives

Christoph Brumann, David Berliner

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785330926
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972 set the contemporary standard for cultural and natural conservation. Today, a place on the World Heritage List is much sought after for tourism promotion, development funding, and national prestige. Presenting case studies from across the globe, particularly from Africa and Asia, anthropologists with situated expertise in specific World Heritage sites explore the consequences of the World Heritage framework and the global spread of the UNESCO heritage regime. This book shows how local and national circumstances interact with the global institutional framework in complex and unexpected ways. Often, the communities around World Heritage sites are constrained by these heritage regimes rather than empowered by them.

Part I

Cities

Chapter 1

Affects and Senses in a World Heritage Site

People-House Relations in the Medina of Fez

Manon Istasse

For those living next to it, officially designated heritage can be a political tool, an economic resource and, arguably, a human right. My fieldwork in the World Heritage site of Fez, Morocco,¹ shows that people also relate to heritage through the senses and affects. Nonetheless, World Heritage policies, and heritage policies in general, mainly focus on technical (which techniques and materials to use in the preservation of such element of heritage), economic (some projects of preservation are aimed at poverty alleviation) or political aspects (possible links with the principles of good governance and participation of local populations). These policies and strategies miss both the sensory and the affective aspects of heritage. In Fez, too, members of institutions in charge of the medina and its heritage hardly take account of senses and affects when they implement conventions, programmes and projects. This stance often leads them to deny any heritage competence to inhabitants, be they Moroccans or foreigners. Inhabitants are accused of not being educated about heritage preservation and of not taking proper care of their houses; they are believed to simply let their houses deteriorate, to want to replace traditional mosaic with modern tiles and to have no taste.

The only professionals of heritage to integrate the senses in their practise are those working in cultural tourism and pedagogues. They insist on the necessary physical contact with heritage as a tool for discovery. Heritage then becomes a theme for guided tours of the city, allowing people to visit elements of heritage that are usually inaccessible. For example, in France, many primary or secondary schools include ‘heritage classes’ in their pedagogical plans. For one week, pupils and teachers spend time with heritage professionals and participate in their activities. For instance, they practise the making of ceramics or stained glass, or they learn about the architecture of a specific place with a professional architect or historian.

Scholars mainly investigate World Heritage sites in terms of conflicts between actors and levels (Fontein 2006, Collins 2008), the political and discursive uses of heritage (Turtinen 2000, Smith 2006) or the underlying values and concepts (Pocock 1997, Ilcan and Philips 2006, Cameron 2008). Senses and affects are marginal in their reports. There are however some exceptions. Muriel Girard (2006) investigates what are called émotions patrimoniales (heritage emotions) among tourists and guides in Fez. In her view, heritage is at the core of an enchanted relation that tourists develop with material traces such as the road network or buildings, the atmosphere – contrasts, colours, odours and sounds – or the encounter with the Other. The tourists see something that doesn’t exist at home. Going further in the investigation of emotions and heritage, Nathalie Heinich (2009) argues that emotions cannot be separated from the heritage experience. Her focus on the criteria and regimes of values underlying heritage making demonstrates that experts leave little room for affects in their daily occupation. On the other hand, Anthony Pecqueux (2006) shows that both experts and nonexperts do have affects. Also, Jean-Louis Tornatore (2010) presents a more nuanced view of the absence of affects by characterizing heritage experts’ work as a game between expert detachment and affective involvement.

Among the French scholars belonging to the research group ‘Emotions patrimoniales’, Véronique Dassié (2006) argues that the destruction of numerous trees in the Park of Versailles during the storm of December 1999 raised various emotions. These emotions are not sufficient to set off action around heritage, but contribute to an ‘intimization’ of heritage through which individuals established a link between the storm and their personal experience. Many French people finally undertook patrimonial action – they adopted a tree or donated money. Noël Barbe and Tornatore (2006) on the other hand are interested in the politicization of emotions after the Luneville Castle fire in 2003. This politicization transformed the disaster into a heritage cause and fostered mobilization for the reconstruction of the castle. Bruno Etienne (2006) aims to understand how an emotion may become a heritage emotion in the first place. According to him, the passage from the familiar and intimate to the public creates the heritage emotion.

These studies of heritage emotions take as a basis a disaster destroying or threatening elements that are not considered as heritage by everybody. This disaster, the following emotions and their politicization facilitate the addition of a patrimonial status. In this sense, the disaster is both a traumatic event and an opportunity. By contrast, in Fez, there is no disaster, no major pending threat. Rather, I focus on affects and senses that contribute on a daily basis to the relation with an element of heritage, namely houses.

Houses-as-heritage have caught the interest of several scholars (Fabre and Iuso 2009). However, only few of them (such as Brumann 2009) really focus on the sensual and affective relation with houses and on how inhabitants take care of and care about houses – scholars most of the time take for granted the official heritage quality of houses and investigate how inhabitants appropriate or reject this quality. The focus on the daily relations with houses (the one I have adopted) sheds light on dividing lines among inhabitants in their relation with the houses – the two main distinctions in Fez being between Moroccan and foreign inhabitants, and between long-term and short-term residents.

I start with a presentation of the medina of Fez and its inhabitants. I continue with an overview of heritage in Fez and I stress the glaring absence of UNESCO, which is present only as a myth in the tales of many inhabitants, as an argument of justification or as a label to promote the city. I also describe the institutions in charge of the medina and its heritage, very much present in their turn, and the inhabitants’ definitions and perceptions of heritage. I then dedicate a large part to the senses and affects in the relations that inhabitants have with their houses. I conclude with some thoughts about the importance of senses and affects in daily life with houses and their heritage qualification.

The Medina of Fez

Fez benefits from an established reputation as a holy city (the city of Moulay Idriss II) and as a cultural centre (the city of the first university in the world, the Qaraouiyine) with a unique architectural style (the Arab-Andalus style). According to tourism guidebooks, local guides, foreign and Moroccan inhabitants, scholars and members of various institutions, Fez is at first sight a traditional city (the most conservative in Morocco), a mysterious city (a city with a ‘deep spirit’, with a maze of small streets where it is easy to get lost) and a medieval city (no cars are allowed within the city walls, where donkeys still carry goods).

Figure 1.1. View of Fez from the Merinid tombs, 2011 (photo: Manon Istasse).

Located in a plain near the Atlas Mountains, Fez was Morocco’s first capital city. Berber and Arab dynasties successively chose Fez as their political centre. Similarly, various populations have followed on each other: Berbers, Arabs and Sephardic Jews arrived in the ninth century, Algerians in the fifteenth and sixteenth, French under the Protectorate in the twentieth century, rural migrants since the 1950s, and Sub-Saharan students attending universities and high schools, as well as tourists and foreign residents more recently (Burckhardt 1992). This mix of populations, dynasties and origins influenced the appearance and the importance of the built heritage and urban planning. The look of Fez dramatically changed between 1912 and 1956 under the French Protectorate, as it lost its status of capital city while the French authorities built a New City two kilometres away from the medina (Jelidi 2012).

Major changes with respect to population, tourism development and cultural heritage policies followed independence in 1957. According to the last population census of 2004,² about 20,088 households live in the medina, which means about 300,000 inhabitants. Among them, 43.5 per cent own their dwelling (which may only be a room in a shared house); 44.8 per cent rent it; and the others benefit from free housing (i.e. they squat or live in the house of a relative who does not live in the medina). The population census counted 193 foreigners – although this number appears too low, and British and Americans in particular were absent. Four years later, in her investigation of foreign guest-house owners, Widad Jodie Bakhella (2008) counted about 300 foreigners: 50 per cent of them were French, 17 per cent British, 9 per cent American, while no other Western nationality exceeded 3 per cent.

Moroccan inhabitants are mainly rural migrants who settled in the medina in the early 1980s. They replaced the Fassi elites³ who started leaving Fez in the late nineteenth century, with the main move occurring after independence.

Some Moroccan elites, administrators and scholars (Lahbil-Tagemouati 2000) refer to this population change to explain the degradation of the medina, and some even speak of ‘foundoukization’⁴ (El Faiz 2002) to describe the endless arrival of migrants. In their view, migrants neither have the money nor the sense to take care of the houses of the medina. Some have been recently renovated,⁵ others are in serious decay – about 3,700 out of the 12,000 – and about three collapse each year.

If Moroccan elites now live in the New City, in Casablanca, Rabat or abroad, new elites, or ‘neo-Fassis’ who are mainly owners of guest houses (McGuinness 2006), have settled in the medina instead. In the late 1990s, the ‘ryad mania’, the trend of foreigners buying traditional houses in Morocco,⁶ reached Fez and the first Moroccan-owned guest house opened in 1999. In December 2012, the Association of Guest Houses listed 63 official guest houses, 16 locations de meublé⁷ and about 100 unofficial tourist accommodations. Out of the 63 guest houses, 34 are Moroccan owned.

Heritage in Fez

The medina has been a World Heritage property since 1981, when UNESCO listed 280 out of the 300 hectares⁸ that it covers. However, UNESCO and World Heritage in Fez are rather noticeable by their absence. The nearest UNESCO field office is located in Rabat. There were once, but not anymore, UNESCO-paid consultants – Titus Burckhardt, Stefano Bianca, Frank Foulon and Frank Van de Kerchove, among others. Nowadays, UNESCO or ICOMOS consultants come when needed, that is to say, when a member of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture calls them to monitor the consequences of a project. The last time was in 2010, during the construction of a tourist and residential area in the buffer zone. Also, the only UNESCO sign within the medina walls was removed in January 2011. The billboard of the CIPA (Centre International pour la Promotion de l’Artisanat; International Centre for the Promotion of Craft Industry) displayed the World Heritage logo.

This is not to say that UNESCO did, or does, nothing in Fez. It participated in the restoration of some monuments. Dar Adiyel, a palace housing the museum of Andalusian music, is presented as an example of international cooperation between UNESCO, Italy and Morocco. Also, four major international preservation campaigns and projects took place: the 1985 UNESCO campaign, the 1992 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project, the 1996 World Bank project (the first to be partly realized in Fez) and the current Millennium Corporation project. Finally, in 1993, Fez actively contributed to the creation of the Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) of which it is now a member. In a way, UNESCO has succeeded in making Fez a city of universal concern, a place of encounter between international sponsors, academics, public authorities and tourists.

However, the two institutions in charge of the medina – ADER Fez (Agence de Développement et de Réhabilitation; Development and Rehabilitation Agency) and the Inspection of Historical Monuments – assert their freedom from UNESCO. ADER was created in 1989 as a semi-public institution, but it became a public limited company in the early 2000s because of financial problems (bribery within the ADER and problems of public funding). This technical authority of the medina is invested with the mission to ‘carry out programmes related to the safeguarding of Fez according to governmental prerogative’. It means fulfilling general aims (to adapt the medina to its demographic and economic evolution) as well as very precise urban works (to prevent houses from collapsing) and data collecting. The ADER employees created a Geographic Information System (GIS) providing detailed data about the medina. In the medina, ADER propped up buildings, set up tourism circuits with the help of other institutions and established three kinds of programmes to financially and technically help inhabitants in undertaking works in their houses.

Heritage is however the main responsibility of the Inspection of Historical Monuments, an administration that is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture. The inspector and his eight employees carry out research and inventories and propose and control files of cultural elements to list. The Inspection members also undertake works involving listed buildings. Finally, they monitor restoration and rehabilitation works engaged by other institutions in order to check the conformity to national heritage regulations and the respect of the architectural structure – the disposal, the plan of the house – and of the architectural decoration.

Even if the Inspection represents UNESCO in Fez, the inspector doesn’t consider UNESCO members as superiors. To him, and to many members of institutions in Fez, UNESCO is at best a justification to support an argument or a label to promote the city. For instance, the inspector and the municipal employees use it to support different actions of preservation. While a municipal employee refers to the acceptance of UNESCO to use reinforced concrete in the rebuilding of a minaret in Meknes, the inspector refers to UNESCO to avoid the recourse to modern materials. Institutions concerned with tourism development brand the medina as a World Heritage site to attract tourists. This use of heritage in justification and promotion processes has been brought to light by Berliner (2010) and Michael Herzfeld (1991) in other heritage sites.

UNESCO is not just an institution, it is a myth (Lahbil-Tagemouati 2000) in the discourses of Moroccan and foreign inhabitants. Most of them don’t know when the medina was listed, what UNESCO is and what it undertakes or undertook in Fez. They mistake ADER technicians for UNESCO experts, and they associate UNESCO with the positive image of a saviour giving money to preserve the medina. In the view of most inhabitants and members of tourism institutions, the concrete benefit of World Heritage listing is financial: tourists are coming. Some inhabitants nonetheless have a critical or oppositional discourse vis-à-vis UNESCO, accusing it of not taking care of the medina and accusing UNESCO members and Moroccan politicians of stealing money. More than UNESCO as a myth in discourses, the medina as a cultural heritage doesn’t seem to resonate with inhabitants’ interests. Houses are first and foremost places to live and are at best – and hardly – considered as a familial heritage or an economic heritage when the house has been turned into a tourist accommodation.

There are many ways that heritage exists in Fez. First of all, people use ‘heritage’ as a word – or several words – in Moroccan Arabic. Turāth is used to talk about the material and immaterial objects handed down by the forefathers. These objects are most of the time connected to religion (din) or the way of life (taqālīd) and are still in use. Turāth is, for instance, the Qaraouiyine mosque, Andalus music or books related to religion – exegesis, but not the Koran. Āthar means historical monuments, and more precisely ruins that are not used anymore, such as Volubilis, a Roman site – also listed as World Heritage – located about seventy kilometres from Fez. Warth is another kind of heritage and designates ‘inheritance’, familial heritage, such as a familial house.

Foreigners refer to heritage when talking of the medina as a medieval city similar to a certain extent to those of the European Middle Ages. To them,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Introduction. UNESCO World Heritage – Grounded?
• Part I. Cities
• Part II. Archaeological Sites
• Part III. Cultural Landscapes
• Index