Abstract

KEHEYAN, Karen. Conservation as an emblem from an anthropological approach to the public. Runa [online]. 2023, vol.44, n.2, pp.123-136.  Epub July 01, 2023. ISSN 1851-9628.  http://dx.doi.org/10.34096/runa.v44i2.12064.

In the late twentieth century, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier complexified the Maussian legacy on the domain of exchange by questioning the safeguarding of objects in a non-Western society. His complexification showed that the domain of conservation is as fundamental to social life as that of exchange. In this paper I address the conservation of cultural property as an emblem from an anthropological approach to the public. The empirical foundation is based on an institution that safeguards community recognized objects in a city located in the central region of Buenos Aires. The argument I construct exoticizes the sacred investiture of conservation from the description of daily tasks in the empirical reality studied. The paper is structured in three parts. In the first one, I situate the treatment of the public from some contributions of the social theory of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the second, I focus on the relationship between French Enlightenment and the public openness of the heritage institution. In the third and last one, I recover observations from an ethnographic fieldwork to show the spoiling as a native figure that goes against the deontological framework of the safeguarding practice and opposes the actors’ valuation of cleanliness by subjectively homologating the institution with the domestic space.

Keywords : Conservation; Emblem; Heritage; The public; Deontology.

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