Bamako s Woodcarvers as Pariahs of Cultural Heritage: Between Marginalization and State Representation

In this article, I propose to view the acts of production behind tourist art as indicators of adaptation strategies paramount to innovation and cultural reprocessing. From this perspective, I examine the principle of materiality associated with UNESCO selection criteria, including a spatial-temporal conception that rejects the contemporaneity between objects and their acts of production. The Malian state s “heritage foundation” excludes tourist art carvers on the basis of their economic survival strategies and marks of identity. In an opposite perspective, the principle of corporality includes a social perspective on cultural heritage in which the human body is viewed as a receptacle of the capital of “social relations of work,” conveying a social aesthetic in which iconographic innovation is the outcome of economic precariousness and hierarchical relations.