RICE UNIVERSITY Cultural Heritage in States of Transition: Authorities
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
RICE UNIVERSITY Cultural Heritage in States of Transition: Authorities, Entrepreneurs, and Sound Archives in Ukraine By Anthony G. Potoczniak A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: Ja n, Professor Department of Anthropology Houston, TX May, 2011 ii Abstract Cultural Heritage in States of Transition: Authorities, Entrepreneurs and Sound Archives in Ukraine by Anthony G. Potoczniak Since Ukraine's independence, a burgeoning private sector has been increasingly encroaching in cultural spaces that previously were conceived of as "property of the state." This dissertation is an ethnographic account of how objects of cultural heritage are being re-configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, it focuses on sound archive field recordings of traditional music and how they are being transformed into cultural commodities. Regarding the jurisdiction of culture -- who controls cultural heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and national identity -- my research shows how these boundaries are increasingly being negotiated within structures of social, cultural and political power. Thus, culture becomes a contested object between competing ideological systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct repressed histories and to revive former national traditions, on the one hand, and cultural heritage as a creative, future-oriented force to construct new identities in growmg consumer marketplaces. iii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to a great number of individuals, who played an important role in my graduate work and the completion of this research project. First and foremost, I want to thank my family, friends, and colleagues in Ukraine, who endured countless hours of conversation about cultural heritage collections in Ukraine. Several individuals, whom I would like to mention, were especially instrumental in providing access to their institutions for my research. They include: Sofia Hrytsa, Halyna Dovzhenok, Liudmyla Yefremova, Mykhailo Khai, and Olena Boriak of theM. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics, and Ethnology (Kyiv); Lina Dobrianska, Bohdan Lukaniuk, Iryna Fedun, and Yuri Rybak from the M. Lysenko Lviv State Music Academy (Lviv); Iryna Klymenko and Olena Murzina from P. Chaikovskyi National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv); Volodymyr Halperin from the Kharkiv Oblast Center of Folk Creativity (Kharkiv); Vira Osadcha Kharkiv, State Academy of Culture (Kharkiv); and especially Yaroslav Davydovsky and Halyna Bushchak from SDA Technologies (Lviv). I would like to especially thank the host families, who accepted me warmly into their homes while I conducted fieldwork in cities across Ukraine. These include Yaroslava Ostaf (Kyiv) and Ihor Bordun (Lviv). They all thought I was a crazy American, but treated me as one of their own. · A special word of thanks goes to my friends at the Fulbright Program in Kyiv, who were especially helpful in supporting my ambitious research project. Their constant lV intercessions and offers to assist in all aspects of my research will always remain an inspiration. At Rice University, I would like to especially thank the members of my dissertation committee: Profs. James Faubion and Stephen Tyler from the Department of Anthropology. They were my mentors throughout the years of training in the department. Their wisdom, flexibility, and understanding during these years at Rice challenged me to try even harder. I greatly appreciate their enthusiasm and support. My outside reader from the Shepherd School of Music, Prof. Richard Lavenda, deserves a heartfelt thanks for all the sound advice before and after my graduate studies. I would also like to thank former members of Rice's anthropology department for their early interest and inspiration in my project. These include Christopher Kelty, Hannah Landecker~ Benjamin Lee, George Marcus, and Julie Taylor. A special thank you to Nia Georges, whose course on grant writing helped craft (and fund) a fantastic fieldwork project. Special merit goes to my favorite department administrator, Carole Speranza, who never let me quit! What would I do without my cohorts Ebru Kayaalp, Valerie Olson, and Elitsa Ranova! When we needed to get together to discuss our projects, they were always there to offer advice. I thank them for their support and friendship. Other members of the Rice family deserve special mention including my best friends at the Woodson Research Center, who·gave me firsthand experience working in a real archive. The Interlibrary Loan Department at Fondren Library went beyond the call of duty. to ·borrow hard-to .. find books. The Circulation Desk was always forgiving. v Finally, I would like to thank my friends at the Center for the Study of Languages. A special thank you goes to my friend, Eric Granquist, who shared a special interest in my research. I would also. like to mention my good friends at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, who gave me the opportunity to intern at their center for the summer. I will always remember this experience! This project took me away from loved ones for extended periods of time. I am especially indebted to my family, who supported this crazy idea to study sound archives in Ukraine. I thank my father and mother for their unconditional love and support though these years. They taught me to be proud of my ethnic heritage. I also thank my mother and father-in-laws for their enthusiastic support. Their selfless sacrifice will never be forgotten. Finally, I thank my wife, who really didn't know what she was getting herself into when we were first introduced. Her positive attitude and sacrifice over the years have been the main reason why this research project is so close to being completed. I owe a big thanks to my children Aiden, Sofia and Harper, for being such good sports while their father was absent so long during fieldwork and on extended weekends writing up these findings. I'll try to make it up to you guys! Funding for my research, which is reflected ·in this dissertation, was ·made possible through the generous support of Rice University's Department of Anthropology, the Fulbright Program, and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York. Thank you! vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements·· iii Introduction Projecting the Field 1 Chapter One Fieldwork in the Age of Ruslana 16 Chapter Two Beyond Traditional Borders 36 Chapter Three Collections in Capitalism 56 Chapter Four Eyewitness of the Archive 85 Chapter Five A Field Entry 102 Chapter Six Voices from America 141 Chapter Seven Networking Folk Heritage Collections 158 In Lieu of a Conclusion 193 Bibliography 197 Appendix A 211 1 Introduction Projecting the Field During the summer of 2002, I participated in a joint folk expedition along the Ukrainian-Belorussian border with several Ukrainian ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and recording engineers from a state-supported sound archive and a privately owned recording studio. Our objective was to record folk music for a compact disc featuring traditional Ukrainian music. In one remote area, we asked a folk singer to perform the traditional songs from her native village. To our surprise, the singer declined the request. Apparently, a contractual agreement between this woman and a private company in faraway Kyiv prohibited the villager from publicly singing folk songs without its prior consent. We had no other recourse than to emphasize our collective association with the state archives. The singer eventually acquiesced to our pleas for cooperation and we recorded her songs without reflecting too much on this incident. However, I realized later that this episode was not some random misunderstanding between ethnographer and informant. Rather, it reflected more far-reaching cultural and social transformations that are prevalent today in many post-socialist countries like Ukraine. This dissertation examines how objects of cultural heritage are being re configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, I focus on folk songs and how they are being transformed into cultural commodities. Many social transformations in. post-socialist countries are driven by public policies that promote nation-building agendas and by free market reforms that are sanctioned by international financial and cultural institutions. Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, a burgeoning private sector 2 has been encroaching increasingly in cultural ~paces that previously were conceived of as "property of the state." As described above, new questions regarding the jurisdiction of culture -- who controls cultural heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and national identity - are being negotiated within structures of social, cultural and political power. Thus, culture has become a contested object between competing ideological systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct repressed histories and to revive former national traditions, on the one hand; and cultural heritage as a creative, future-oriented force to construct wholly new identities in growing consumer marketplaces, on the other. Current research on cultural heritage collections especially in post-socialist countries increasingly examines the effects of transition from the perspective of global and institutional processes. For example, there exists a rich body of work that studies the political, technological, and legal challenges experienced in many. modem memory