Culture and Value

When heritage becomes a commodity, when culture is instrumental in driving tourism, and when individuals assert ownership over either, social, ideological, political, and economic motivations intertwine. Bestowing value on "culture" is itself a culturally rooted act, and the essays gathered in Culture and Value focus on the motivations and value regimes people in particular times and contexts have generated to enhance the visibility and prestige of cultural practices, narratives, and artifacts.This collection of essays by noted folklorist Regina F. Bendix, offers a personal record of the unfolding scholarly debate regarding value in the studies of tourism, heritage, and cultural property. Written over the course of several decades, Bendix's case studies and theoretical contributions chronicle the growing and transforming ways in which ethnographic scholarship has observed social actors generating value when carrying culture to market, enhancing value in inventing protective and restorative regimes for culture, and securing the potential for both in devising property rights. Bendix's work makes a case for a reflexive awareness of the changing scholarly paradigms that inform scholars' research contributions.

Folklorists need to be 'in the room' as equal partners, whether as professional experts, advocates, or mediators. To attain this, the discipline needs to address the whole issue of cultural heritage as currently understood by a set of wider and influential interests, and develop empirical and theoretical approaches which embrace opportunities within emerging contexts, while maintaining the underlying essentials. Overall, [Culture and Value] is a valuable, possibly necessary, summary of changing attitudes and disciplinary approaches over the past half-century., Comprising a concatenation of previously published articles, as well as unpublished conference presentations, Culture and Value presents some of the most important scholarship on these topics in the field of folklore in an eminently readable form. , This book provides some useful historical materials for those interested in the development of both the anthropological and folkloric aspects of heritage and tourism studies., Bendix has made a significant contribution to the study of cultural resources with Culture and Value. . . .It is a must read for scholars particularly interested in politics and the allocation of funding and personal rights over tangible and intangible culture.

Regina F. Bendix is Professor of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Her books include In Search of Authenticity and Backstage Domains. She is author (with Kilian Bizer and Dorothy Noyes) of Sustaining Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and editor (with Aditya Eggert and Arnika Peselmann) of Heritage Regimes and the State. Together with Ulrich Marzolph she edits the journal Narrative Culture.