@article{5031,
  author = {Michelle Bigenho and Henry Stobart},
  title = {Archiving the expertise with a view to heritage: Heritage processes, expert knowledge and archiving as an aspiration},
  abstract = {Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists are sometimes invited to take on the role of "experts" in the public policies of their fields of study. Building on ethnographic research into heritage-making processes in Bolivia, this article reflects on the position of "culture" researchers in these processes. In 21st century Bolivia, these processes have taken the form of laws which, one by one, declare cultural expressions as "intangible heritage". The protagonists in heritage-making compile "aspirational archives" (Appadurai) that bring together research from a variety of sources. This essay focuses on this nexus between "research" and a political-legal objective or a development project. Given that no knowledge production can take place outside a political frame, we consider the effects of what Manuela Carneiro Da Cunha calls "the round trip" of colonial products in the production of expertise about "culture" and in the processes of heritage-making. We argue that, although the UNESCO Convention of 2003 (ICH) enables the actual "culture bearers" to become "experts" of their own culture, and despite the intended decolonizing processes driven by the Bolivian State, we find a heritage-making world in which expertise produced through inter-ethnic culture trips is still valued.},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música},
  volume = {21-22},
  issn = {1697-0101},
}