[Kang Li] Intangible cultural heritage protection and gender equality

Abstract: Due to the very different cognitive positions of the drafters of the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage on gender equality, this standard instrument with international influence issued in 2003 has created a gender blind spot, which in turn triggered the issue of gender in the field of intangible cultural heritage protection.

Marginalization.

This marginalization, which deviates from the current situation of diverse and active gender practices in community cultural inheritance, directly leads to the gender imbalance in cultural participation in the practice of intangible cultural heritage protection and the simplified cognitive tendency to equate gender with women.

Continuing criticism from academic circles about the consequences of this deviation, as well as the changes in the weight of gender issues in UNESCO's overall strategic framework after 2008, have prompted UNESCO to emphasize the importance of gender issues in relevant international instruments.

It has also enabled States parties to highlight gender concerns in protection practice when applying for various lists.

The shift in gender concerns in international instruments and the adjustment of reporting practices by States parties have brought about a more complex gender game between the spirit of the Convention and community practice.

Therefore, what requires scholars to think deeply is not only whether gender equality as an international norm can be realized in the protection of intangible cultural heritage, but also gender issues that have complex entanglements with multiple power relationships such as culture, capital, and politics.

How to weigh the relationship between community interests and global interests.

Keywords: Intangible cultural heritage; gender; gender equality; gender game; Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Author: Kang Li, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Folk Literature, School of Literature, Beijing Normal University.

UNESCO's attention to gender issues has begun since its emergence on the international stage.

In its discourse system, gender issues point to gender equality and women's empowerment under the framework of human rights.

As a prerequisite for human rights principles and people-oriented sustainable development, gender equality particularly emphasizes "equality between the sexes in terms of rights, responsibilities and opportunities, that is, in the process of recognizing the diversity of the gender groups, women's interests, needs and priorities.

Sex, like men, is an object that needs to be considered." This international attention to the situation of women largely supports the fact presented by feminist studies aimed at improving the status of women, that is, in the process of human culture, male discourse overshadowed the normalization of female expression, making female discourse and its Cultural inheritance has always been marginalized in historical documents.

Even though this situation gradually improves with the changes of the times, this monaural gender expression still persists in most fields, including the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

Postmodern feminist theorist Judith Butler once jokingly used "trouble" to describe the problems encountered in the process of constructing gender identity.

Although UNESCO's focus on gender in the process of promoting and implementing the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage is not the complexity and performance of gender construction that Butler values, the author can still clearly feel the challenges faced by gender issues, which are UNESCO's global priorities, while sorting out the basic documents of the Convention.

and international instruments related to the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

1.

Gender blind spots in the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage

In 2003, UNESCO promulgated and implemented the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which has attracted common attention around the world.

However, in this standard document that represents the international order in the field of "intangible cultural heritage", it is difficult to find any information related to gender equality or women's empowerment.

This hidden phenomenon, which runs counter to UNESCO's intensified gender focus, originated from a fierce debate during the drafting of the text of the 2003 Convention.

Scholars and United Nations officials involved in the drafting of the 2003 Convention have two extremely different positions on how to express women's voices to demonstrate human rights norms in the process of protecting intangible cultural heritage: one party believes that based on women's important role in the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, protection work should focus on highlighting attention to this gender; On the other hand, the other party is extremely worried that any excessive attention may reverse trigger discrimination against women and is not conducive to the realization of gender equality.

In the end, the holders of the latter view won the debate.

Therefore, in the texts of the 2003 Convention and its operational guidelines, female identity and practice are included in the description of communities and groups enjoying "intangible cultural heritage", while gender concerns are completely hidden in the relevant texts 'emphasis on the international human rights framework.

Generally speaking, as UNESCO's cultural management system, various cultural conventions imply the rights and obligations of relevant states parties in different fields of the international order.

Therefore, they all have strong influence on various relevant practices of States parties.

The same is true for the 2003 Convention.

Its influence in the implementation of international cultural affairs is mainly reflected in the existence of a representative list of human intangible cultural heritage, a list of intangible cultural heritage in urgent need of protection, and a list of best practices.

Although the three types of lists do not mean a measure of cultural value, as an internationally recognized standard for the selection and determination of intangible cultural heritage, the inclusion of the relevant lists directly affects the protection practices of each State party.

The gender blind spots in this international normative document and its operational guidelines that deeply affect the assessment and development of heritage have largely led to the disregard for gender issues in the inheritance and research practice of intangible cultural heritage.

As Janet Blake criticized,"The difficulty in identifying gender roles in literature and research on intangible cultural heritage makes gender roles an often ignored category."

2.

Gender marginalization in the practice of intangible cultural protection

In UNESCO's 2014 gender report,"Gender Equality: Heritage and Creativity", a discourse from indigenous Africans fully illustrates the consequences of this indifference, that is, women's voices expressing gender relations within communities are forced to remain in long-term silence.

The old woman said: "Many years ago, white male anthropologists came to us to collect information.

They communicate with men, and men tell their stories to anthropologists.

Then we waited for them to come to us again, but they never came back.

We women also want our stories to be recorded, so that young women can continue and maintain the vitality of our information before it dies.

We want this information to be available when young children are born.

We have lost a lot of our own language, and we don't want our stories to leave us anymore."

A growing number of cultural facts have prompted UNESCO to face up to the consequences of the gender blind area of the 2003 Convention in the field of intangible cultural heritage.

In 2013, the eighth meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage clearly pointed out this lack of gender attention in relevant documents for the first time.

Like an "elephant in the room", everyone is aware of the gender issue.

Importance, but no one dares to admit its existence.

If we sort out the specific information on the items included in various inventories of intangible cultural heritage by various states parties after the promulgation of the 2003 Convention, we will discover how serious the marginalization of gender issues is in this field.

This marginalization is mainly reflected in the following two aspects.

First, there is the gender imbalance in cultural participation.

The so-called cultural participation usually refers to cultural practices that may involve consumption, and also includes activities carried out in communities that reflect quality of life, traditions and beliefs.

This is an important criterion for UNESCO to conduct social and cultural measurement.

In the 2009 UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics, intangible cultural heritage and six other areas are included in the scope of assessing cultural participation.

Although, more and more evidence from UNESCO shows that women play an extremely important role in the inheritance of heritage knowledge and the cultivation of creativity, and are important promoters of inclusive social development and social and economic empowerment.

But, at least until 2013, gender patterns in cultural participation will remain the mainstream of men's cultural practices.

In the cultural field including intangible cultural heritage, the presentation of women's discourse, gender exchanges and related cultural inheritance is in a state of scarcity.

Although the complexity of gender phenomena is difficult to explain statistically, annual sample data on individual cases cannot fully reflect the gender imbalance in cultural participation around the world.

However, the two sets of data shown below still clearly demonstrate and confirm to a certain extent the current situation of women in cultural participation.

Figure 1 and Figure 2)

Figure 1 Gender distribution map in the U.S.

cultural field in 2012

Figure 2 Gender composition of personnel in three industries in China in 2010

The first set of data shows the distribution of gender participation in the cultural field in the United States in 2012.

Since this group of data adopts the subdivision criteria of the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics, it is clear that the huge gap between female participation and male participation in the field of intangible cultural heritage can be seen.

The second set of data shows the gender composition of China's three industries based on the 2010 China census.

In China's industrial structure, culture-related fields all belong to the tertiary industry.

Although this group of data does not fully detail the cultural field in accordance with the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics, it still clearly shows the gender imbalance in cultural participation that year-the difference between female participation and male participation is as high as 10.6%.

As mentioned earlier, the author acknowledges the limitations of case data in presenting cultural facts, but these two sets of data do reflect the absence of vulnerable groups, mainly women, in the cultural field.

Second, there is the simplification of gender cognition.

This simplification is mainly reflected in equating gender issues with female issues.

As Laurajane Smith pointed out when discussing the connection between heritage and gender identity,"The discussion of cultural heritage largely ignores gender issues, and even if they are mentioned, they often become female issues, just as men have no gender."

If we look at it from the perspective of international laws and human rights norms, the feminization of gender issues has its historical origin.

On the one hand, as a cultural issue, gender has attracted international attention, which has gradually deepened along with the expansion of feminist discourse on a global scale.

From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the universal demands to change the status of women emerged in many countries around the world, giving the feminist discourse born at the junction of the expansion of nationalism, imperialism and capitalism a strong international character, which in turn promoted gender equality to become an important global priority in UNESCO's work on heritage, creativity and cultural diversity after 2008.

On the other hand, women have rights with special status in the field of human rights, which makes the gender of women regarded as a special category in the determination of international law.

As early as 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development clearly recognized

The role of women in achieving sustainable development.

Therefore, Janet Blake emphasized: "Since it involves the way rights are distributed according to gender in society, it is not surprising that gender is simply identified as women...

When identifying intangible cultural heritage, formulating protection action plans and implementing other intangible cultural heritage actions, women should also be regarded as an important factor." From this point of view, this simplified perception of feminization is consistent with UNESCO's pursuit of gender equality and women's empowerment.

Emphasizing the cultural participation and creation of women is indeed an important way to promote the realization of gender equality norms.

But at the same time, we should also be vigilant that this emphasis on a single gender transformed from cognitive simplification of gender cognition may lead to a departure from the spirit of the 2003 Convention on the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

In UNESCO's discourse system, various cultural heritage has always been regarded as a gendered subjective cognitive concept.

They include not only expectations for gender equality, but also respect for the diversity of cultural practices.

The 2003 Convention, born out of the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, protects the intangible cultural heritage of mankind based on the standpoint of maintaining world cultural diversity, and the gender practices contained therein have always been regarded as an integral part of cultural diversity.

Globally, gender cognition and practice do exist in diverse ways.

For example, in Vietnam, at the Chau van shamans singing ceremony, the gender roles played by male and female priests are completely inverted; in Brazil, there is an obvious phenomenon of "gender crossing" transgendered among sex workers; and in some indigenous tribes in North America, there are as many as seven different gender perceptions.

There are countless cultural facts like this.

However, the tendency to simplify gender cognition and rigid compliance with the dual gender framework will greatly alienate the respect for the diversity of gender practices, and may even lead to the above-mentioned weak cultural inheritance and expression in intangible cultural heritage protection.

It will be despised, ignored, and even covered by international selection guidelines until it disappears completely.

Strictly speaking, the marginalization of gender in the field of intangible cultural heritage protection is an extension of the complex entanglements between gender and multiple power relations such as culture, capital, and politics, and contains many issues that require in-depth discussion.

For example, how to truly integrate the understanding of diversity into the understanding of gender issues? How to explain the situation where the culture of women and other genders is ignored or not recognized in the protection of intangible cultural heritage? How can we arouse the attention of cultural owners to these vulnerable groups while reflecting on the rationality and legitimacy of the existing gender regulations? How to explain the process by which interpretations and cultural policies legalize gender stereotypes...

3.

Global priorities and the gender shift in international instruments

As mentioned earlier, the gender concealment that appears in the text of the 2003 Convention does not stem from the neglect of gender issues, but from the drafters 'different positions on recognizing gender equality.

However, as a standard document with international influence, its gender blind area has always been criticized for its consequences in the practice of protecting intangible cultural heritage.

Just one month after the promulgation of the Convention in 2003, the Expert Meeting on "Gender and Intangible Heritage" pointed out in its final report that in the process of protecting intangible cultural heritage, the understanding of gender equality is to a certain extent influenced by many European/American-centered views and theories.

Western gender roles and values can have a negative and even dangerous impact on other gender systems that are the most important and most important elements of intangible cultural heritage to which they belong.

Therefore, the interpretation of gender and gender equality within communities should be prioritized.

In addition, the report emphasizes in its recommendations to UNESCO that safeguarding intangible cultural heritage should include an understanding of and respect for diverse gender practices and representations.

In addition to the ongoing criticism from all walks of life, another important factor driving the transformation of gender issues in the 2003 Convention is the change in the position of gender issues in UNESCO's overall strategy.

In 2008, UNESCO identified gender equality as one of two overall priorities for the medium-term strategy period 2008 - 2013.

Later, it was stated in the UNESCO Priority Action Plan for Gender Equality 2014 - 2021 that the priority position of this matter will continue into the next medium-term strategy.

The plan not only "integrates gender equality as a priority into UNESCO's overall strategic framework; integrates gender equality, develops plans for different gender groups, and organizational structures and orders; As the three major themes for assessing gender equality priorities,"Monitoring and Evaluation" also proposes to "systematically collect information on gender issues from periodic reports of relevant cultural conventions to provide information on future planning strategies, impact assessments and monitoring efforts to support gender equality mainstreaming." The first expected result is to "further understand women's contribution to cultural life by collecting 50 periodic reports explaining policies to promote equal access to and participation in cultural life."

Driven by the above two factors, UNESCO began to reiterate the importance of gender issues in the practice, protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, and called on States parties to highlight this importance when submitting various reports.

Although many UNESCO documents have pointed out that the entanglement between gender and complex power relations makes it difficult to extract the criteria for determining gender equality from diverse ethnic/national identities.

This has become the biggest problem faced by UNESCO in its attempt to incorporate gender equality into policies, legislation, development plans, protection plans and programmes related to intangible cultural heritage.

However, ten years after the promulgation of the 2003 Convention, the Eighth Meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage (8COM) still put forward a motion when reviewing the standard-setting work of the cultural sector, namely, the motion to "amend all relevant documents and forms, including the Operational Guidelines, Implementation Report Format and Nomination Documents), to include gender-related guidelines and issues", and began to produce practical results in subsequent practice.

This effectiveness is first demonstrated by the fact that at the expert meeting on "Protecting Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development at the National Level" held in 2014 to revise the operational guidelines, gender equality and food safety, health care, quality education and access to safe and clean water resources and sustainable use of water resources are regarded as important themes for inclusive social development.

Secondly, in relevant documents for 2016, guidance related to gender issues began to be highlighted.

For example, the 2016 edition of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage's Operational Guidelines includes a gender equality clause for the first time, clearly stating: "States parties should strive to promote the contribution of intangible cultural heritage and ensure a greater degree of gender equality, eliminate gender discrimination, while recognizing that communities and groups pass on their gender-related values, norms and expectations through intangible cultural heritage.

The gender identity of group and community members is formed in this trait environment." In the statements of the "2016 Memorandum of Application for Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" and the "2016 Memorandum of Application for List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Urgent Need of Protection", gender is also regarded as an important measure of recognizing the diversity and heterogeneity of the community, and reminds States Parties should pay due attention to relevant gender perceptions when describing the connection between multiple subjects and specific intangible cultural heritage and its social operating mechanisms.

The most important manifestation of effectiveness is that since 2015, emphasis on gender issues has begun to appear in various project applications and performance reports submitted by States parties.

4.

Gender Crossing: The Complex Game between the Spirit of the Convention and Community Practice

If you peruse these declarations and performance reports marked with gender concerns, you will discover another phenomenon that follows the transformation of gender concerns in the instruments of the Convention-gender crossing.

This kind of gender crossing refers to the situation that crosses the original gender boundaries in the cultural field of an established community in inheritance practice in order to alleviate the inheritance dilemma of certain intangible cultural heritage.

For example, in Austria's "Classical Riding and High School of Spanish Riding School in Vienna" project, in its local society, riding tradition refers not only to the performance of riders and libaza horses in many ceremonial scenes, but also to all knowledge and practice in the breeding, care, training and riding of horses.

For locals, all venues associated with riding traditions are highly masculine.

Because traditionally, all functional roles, including riders, veterinarians, and other functional roles related to horse domestication and riding, have been performed by men.

However, with the increasing number of female students in riding schools, women have become equally divided with men in all relevant positions.

Therefore, when the resolution to include this heritage in the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, it was specifically mentioned that the ability to create a more balanced gender relationship in this traditionally male-dominated field was one of the reasons why this intangible cultural heritage was included in the list.

The same situation also happened in the "Aitysh/Aitys Improvisation" project in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and the "Tinian Island Marble Carving Skills" project in Greece.

Traditionally, these two projects have also been cultural activities carried out by men alone.

However, in the contemporary inheritance process, with the addition and increase of female trainers, its inheritance practice has also experienced leapfrogging and subversion of the original gender order in the local community.

The phenomenon of gender crossing is not only for women crossing the boundaries of traditional men's activities, but also for reverse crossing.

China's "Li Traditional Spinning, Dyeing, Weaving and Embroidery Skills" project is traditionally a female tradition with Li women as the main inheritors.

In the process of inheriting the original skills, there are even textile tools that prohibit men from approaching or touching, otherwise it will be unlucky.

However, in the recent inheritance practice, young men have also begun to be accepted to pass on their skills.

From a realistic perspective, it is not difficult to understand that the emergence of this gender crossing must be influenced by international policies and national power, and is also related to the inheritance dilemma of contemporary "intangible cultural heritage".

How to recognize and deal with these dilemmas is an important criterion to determine whether it can be included in various lists of intangible cultural heritage.

Both ICH-02 for the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and ICH-01 for the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding have corresponding evaluation criteria that clearly require States Parties to describe the internal and external constraints of the declared project or the threats affecting the continuation of the project.

In real life, the most common threat to the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary society is the impact on the original community structure, living state, values and other aspects caused by the collision between tradition and modernity.

This impact usually causes dilemmas such as intergenerational breaks that affect the survival of intangible cultural heritage.

Therefore, from the perspective of "intangible cultural heritage" inheritance, the frequent phenomenon of gender crossing can be seen as both community people's response to international norms, and community practice's response to difficulties.

But from a gender perspective, the question raised by Janet Blake in a recent UNESCO report on gender equality is very worth pondering: How should intangible cultural heritage with specific gender attributes be passed down? Can inheritance practices that are open to other genders in response to the intergenerational rupture crisis or to increase the number of practitioners lead to "better protection" of heritage? How is the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage with specific gender attributes, and under what circumstances will it affect the viability of its content? Is this impact positive or negative?…Indeed, the operation of gender order reflects the operation of structures within the community.

Therefore, the apparent behavior across gender boundaries in intangible cultural heritage projects is not just about the realization of the international norm of gender equality, but a more complex issue, namely whether and how community interests and global interests can be compatible in gender practice.

In fact, for the living culture of community people, all top-down attention and reinforcement may become a double-edged sword of mutual benefit and disaster-bringing opportunities and damage.

Gender equality, a priority expected by the United Nations, has become difficult to avoid the impact of the "double-edged edge" after it has entered the public policy systems of various States parties and has been applied to the inheritance and protection of intangible cultural heritage.

On the one hand, the intervention of international discourse has opened the pursuit and highlighting of women's voices.

To a certain extent, it will promote women's participation and creation in intangible cultural heritage.

It will indeed bring equal possibilities for women to participate, intervene and contribute to cultural life on the basis of changing women's cultural silence.

In turn, it has a positive impact on women's empowerment.

However, on the other hand, this international norm's attention and emphasis on women's cultural events may also have a reverse effect.

That is, when the protection of intangible cultural heritage causes women to move from the "daily" state to the "outside of daily life" state, highlighting behavior itself may force women to re-manifest the original order of society and limit it to their original social status, as Yuka Toyoshima showed when reflecting on her professional experience, although as a male tradition, Japan's Noh Nogaku art does not impose restrictions on women, but the actual situation in the industry can still clearly reflect the original gender order in the community-not only is it difficult for female performers to touch the core skills of this art, their performances are often not recognized accordingly.

Once this situation occurs, it will definitely intensify the legalization of the existing gender order in an established society or community, and is very likely to harm the human rights norms on which gender equality relies.

At this point, the article seems to have returned to the debate on gender concerns among the drafters of the 2003 Convention.

However, this reflection and return actually refers to a series of issues about the complex connection between intangible cultural heritage and gender: In protection actions based on the 2003 Convention, should we face the diversity of gender practices in cultural inheritance, and then clarify the producers of the gender order in the corresponding community and the influencing factors of changing the order? Should we rethink the validity and limits of the gender framework in contemporary society? When conducting protection practice, should we "not only examine the experiences of women compared to men, but also care about the experiences of other genders other than men and women and related power transfers", so as to avoid the emergence of more gender blind spots or misunderstandings?...

These questions require constant reflection and review by all participants in the protection of intangible cultural heritage before they can make better answers.

The original text is contained in "National Art", No.

6, 2016.

Please refer to the paper version as standard.