Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State

Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State takes lawmaking around cultural heritage as a window through which to view the decentered workings of the Indigenous-focused Plurinational Bolivian State. The early twenty-first century brought to Bolivia its first Indigenous president, a new constitution, and a profusion of laws—many ratified at the highest levels of government—that recognized individual music and dance expressions as intangible cultural heritage. Addressing the question of what motivates Bolivians in this heritage-making frenzy at this politically transformative moment, the book reorients UNESCO-driven heritage debates to a different set of questions—a pivot the authors call “heritage otherwise.” These inquiries focus on how citizens use law to frame expressive culture and engage their new state. Through grounded case studies, the book reveals how competing claims over music and dance expressions—often perceived as a problem—stimulate energy and abundance, whether as passionate aficionado research, or as dynamic festivals. Managing these productive conflicts often involves strategic uses of scale within the country’s new political autonomies, even as old-style nationalisms lurk beneath a plurinational sheen. One case study highlights imagined Indigenous autonomy as bolstered by decolonizing historiography that predates the Plurinational State by several decades. Contributing to legal anthropology, heritage studies, ethnomusicology, and anthropology of the state, Heritage Fever looks beyond intellectual property frames, opens new perspectives on archival thinking as related to heritage research, reflects on decolonizing practices in expertise and knowledge production, and uncovers the agency of mid-level citizens in a decolonizing state.