MobileHeritage
PI: dr hab. Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, prof. UJ
Introduction
The goal of setting up the research group is to offer an innovative approach to issues at the interface of heritage and mobility studies. This will be facilitated by means of multisensory theoretical and methodological approaches. The initiative is conducted under the umbrella of transnational research teams (TRTs) that will be created in the field of “Mobility and Migration” in relation to the Una Europa Cultural Heritage (CH) focus area. The main coordinators of the project are Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, PhD, and Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła, PhD.
Rationale
The multisensory approach is gaining momentum in the social sciences and humanities. It has solid canonical grounds coined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), Sarah Pink (2009, 2013), Paul Stoller (1997), Nadia Seremetakis (1996, 2019), and David Howes (1991, 2003), and is now expanding and entering new areas of research across disciplines. The expansion of the constellation of those studies that employ a multisensory perspective proves that the opening of theoretical and methodological toolboxes on sensuous scholarship adds to the cognitive understanding of the researched phenomena in disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, human geography, archaeology, and more.
On a different note, heritage studies, under the influence of globalization, mass migration, and mass tourism, have become permanently intertwined with the processes of mobility. The intersection of heritage and mobility studies has been a subject of extensive research, with bourgeoning literature on heritage and tourism, a growing interest in the heritage of migrants, and heritage and politics in the context of mobility. Beyond these there is also expansion of the field of memory studies. These developments resulted in offering a fresh contribution to critical heritage approaches. While rich in scholarship, the interest to bring together various aspects of heritage and mobility processes does not always reflect an even transfer of knowledge between the subfields involved, leaving unfortunate theoretical omissions.
The practice of both researching and exhibiting heritage has become gradually more open to a multisensory approach. This includes museum presentations that involve not only sight, but also smell, touch, and hearing in the exhibit (see ANAMED 2016; Miotto 2016; Davis & Thys-Şenocak 2017), and methodological choices of heritage scholars, who are eager to employ visual and sensory methodologies in their research into heritage (Wang et. al. 2020) and tourism (Rakić & Chambers 2012). New heritage regimes emerging from mobility and cultural flux, as well as from belonging to horizontal networks, present a challenge to traditional attribution of heritage to the local community that identifies itself with the particular resources of the past. On a different note, the shift from ocular-centrism and logo-centrism is a consequence of critical reflection on the reductiveness of approaching only the discursive or visual representations of heritage (Waterton & Watson 2010). Discussions of the nature of affect and emotion in heritage-making, embodiment, and performativity, privilege various subjectively situated agents engaged in inter- and cross-cultural encounters (Smith 2021).
Studying mobility through a multisensory lens has proven fruitful for several scholars, who pointed out how sensory experiences can create barriers to contact between local inhabitants and transients (Dey 2021; Low 2005; MacQuarie 2021), discussed the embodiment of migrants’ adaptation process (Bendixsen, 2020; Willen 2007), described transnational sensescapes of the actors (Low & Kalekin-Fishman 2016), problematized the relationship between senses and home on the move (Ahmed 1999), and considered the senses as part of a tourist experience (Urry 2002).
While not exhaustive, the growing body of research employing a multisensory approach within heritage and mobility studies, sets a fruitful direction for further multisensory research within and across the two fields. Our research group intends to go a step further by bridging the theoretical and empirical gap between the heritage and the mobility found in their joint field of study with the help of the employment of a multisensory perspective. This ambition comes with two novelties. Firstly, it attempts to bridge the gap between heritage and mobility, not only by researching empirically the issues from the intersection of the two areas, but most importantly, by creating a theoretical dialogue that results in novel perspectives that draw from intellectual advancements of both heritage studies and mobility studies. This will be facilitated by the employment of a multisensorial approach to look into the studied issues through new theoretical, epistemological, and methodological lenses that acknowledge the connection between rational processes of heritage-making in the context of mobility, and the physical experiences that assist in this process. This presents a second novelty, namely conducting the research that actively employs theoretical, epistemological, and methodological frameworks that acknowledge the premises of a sensory turn in social sciences and humanities (Howes 2021; Pink 2011; Lauwrens 2012; Skeates & Day 2019).
Main activities and results
The primary activity of the research group is to collaborate on the draft of an edited volume to be submitted to a prestigious international publishing house specializing in issues of critical heritage studies. The contributors to the volume will be selected based on an open call for book chapters. Synergies between the research conducted by the individual and associated members of the group, which are crucial for this project, will be achieved by means of regular online discussions, but primarily by an in-person workshop to be held in Kraków at the end of April 2023. The workshop will be dedicated to the development of individual chapters and thematic sections. Participants will work collaboratively with each other, supported by experienced, world-renowned researchers who have agreed to take part in the project as discussants.
In addition to the edited volume, further activities are envisaged to support the continuation of the cooperation (submissions of panels/papers at international conferences, dissemination activities within the framework of ThinkTank, further work on external grants to develop research problems).
References:
- Ahmed, S. (1999). Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 329–347.
- Bendixsen, S. K. N. (2020). Existential Displacement: Health Care and Embodied Un/Belonging of Irregular Migrants in Norway. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 44(4), 479–500.
- Davis, L.. & Thys-Şenocak, L. (2017). Heritage and scent: research and exhibition of Istanbul’s changing smellscapes. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(8), 723–741.
- Dey, I. (2021). Smells, Intimate Labor and Domestic Work in Delhi, India. The Senses and Society, 16(3), 339–350.
- Everyday Sounds: Exploring Sound Through Daily Life. (2016). Exhibition at the display at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED)
- Fırat, H. B. (2021). Acoustics as tangible heritage: re-embodying the sensory heritage in the boundless reign of sight. Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, 50(1), 3–14.
- Heywood, I. & Sandywell, B. (Eds.). (2011). The Handbook of Visual Culture. London & Dublin: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Howes, D. (Ed). (1991). The Varieties of Sensory Experience. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Howes, D. (Ed). (2003). Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Howes, D. (Ed). (2005). Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
- Lauwrens, J. (2012). Welcome to the revolution: The sensory turn and art history. Journal of Art Historiography, 7, 1–17.
- Low, K. E. Y. (2005). Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon. Current Sociology, 53(3), 397–417.
- Low, K.E.Y & Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2016). Afterword: Towards Transnational Sensescapes. In Kalekin-Fishman, D. & Low, K.E.Y. (Eds.), Everyday life in Asia: social perspectives on the senses, London and New York: Routledge, 195–204.
- MacQuarie, J. C. (2021). The Researcher’s Nightworkshop: A Methodology of Bodily and Cyber-Ethnographic Representations in Migration Studies. In Nikielska-Sekula, K., Desille (Eds.), A. Visual Methodology in Migration Studies: New Possibilities, Theoretical Implications, and Ethical Questions. Cham: Springer Nature, 293–314.
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.
- Miotto, L. (2016). Using scents to connect to intangible heritage: Engaging the visitor olfactory dimension: Three museum exhibition case studies. In 2016 22nd International Conference on Virtual System & Multimedia (VSMM). IEEE, 1–5.
- Pink, S. (2011). Sensory digital photography: re-thinking ‘moving’ and the image. Visual studies, 26(1), 4–13.
- Pink, S. (2013). Engaging the Senses in Ethnographic Practice Implications and Advances. Senses and Society, 8(3), 261–67.
- Pink, S. (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage
- Rakić, T. & Chambers, D. (Eds.). (2012), An introduction to visual research methods in tourism, Oxon & New York: Routledge.
- Seremetakis, N. C. (1996). The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Seremetakis, N. C. (2019). Sensing the everyday: dialogues from austerity Greece. New York: Routledge.
- Smith, J. (2021). Emotional heritage: visitor engagement at museums and heritage sites. New York: Routledge.
- Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. New York: Routledge.
- Sterling, C. (2020). Heritage, photography and the affective past, London & New York: Routledge.
- Stoller, P. (1997). Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Skeates, R., & Day, J. (2019). Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. London: Routledge.
- Urry, J. (2002). The Tourist Gaze 2.0. London: Sage.
- Wang, M., Zhao, M., Lin, M., Cao, W., Zhu, H., & An, N. (2020). Seeking Lost Memories: Application of a new visual methodology for heritage protection. Geographical Review, 110(4), 556–574.
- Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2010). Culture, heritage and representation: perspectives on visuality and the past. Ashgate Publishing.
- Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2015). The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Willen, S. (2007). Exploring ‘Illegal’ and ‘Irregular’ Migrants’ Lived Experiences of Law and State Power. International Migration 45(3), 2–7.
Contact: m.banaszkiewicz@uj.edu.pl