Archaeological heritage and cultural intimacy : an interview with Michael Herzfield

In his work in Greece, Italy, and Thailand, Michael Herzfeld, Professor at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, has involved himself with communities of people who find themselves caught up in the politics of the past. For some of these people, the antiquity of their well-loved surroundings has been something of a curse, attracting as it does the interest of wealthy would-be residents to their neighbourhoods, a situation which Herzfeld (2009a) has studied in the Monti district of Rome. In other places, such as at Pom Mahakan in Bangkok (Herzfeld, 2006, 2010), the existence of monumental remains in a community’s midst has attracted the interest of government departments intent on developing their neighbourhoods as heritage precincts. Among the other categories of displaced and marginalized people in the world we now have that of heritage refugees. Herzfeld’s work is of particular relevance to archaeologists and heritage practitioners because of the fine-grained pictures his ethnography draws of life inside such communities as they struggle to assert their own integrity and also because of his interest in how local actors are able to redeploy discourses of heritage and nationalism in their own defence. As revealed in the following interview, his work has also led him to take a critical view of the category of intangible heritage as it has been articulated by UNESCO in recent years. Much of the interview references the situation in Thailand, which is Herzfeld’s most recent field area as well as being a focus of Byrne’s study of heritage and popular religion (e.g. 1995, 2009b). The interview was recorded in Sydney in August 2009. Kerrie McGovern produced a wonderfully accurate transcript which was edited by Byrne and Herzfeld