Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere

6. How the Dead Matter: The Production of Heritage

Here lie the remnants of the Lowland humid tropical forest. . . . This is the habitat of the famous Aye-Aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis, the most outlandish of the Malagasy Lemurs. In the area of MananaraNord , the flora and fauna reach levels of endemicity unequalled in Madagascar. That is why the conservation of its environment is not only a national priority but a world priority. —UNESCO’s brochure for the Mananara-Nord Biosphere Reserve 139 6 HowtheDeadMatter The Production of Heritage In Madagascar, several cultural and natural heritage sites have been included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, including the Royal Hill of Ambohimanga, consisting of a royal city and burial site, the cathedrallike limestone formations (tsingy) of Bemaraha, and the rain forests of Atsinanana, “relict” forests of the east coast. World Heritage sites possess at least one of ten criteria of value, including such things as exceptional biodiversity, ecological service, beauty, historical and archaeological significance , and creativity (UNESCO, World Heritage Convention, http:// whc.unesco.org/en/criteria). UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention webpage defines “heritage” as “our legacy from the past, what we live with today , and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration” (UNESCO World Heritage Convention, http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/). The World Heritage preservation program has identified between eight hundred and nine hundred built and natural sites, as new sites are being evaluated for possible inclusion on the list (Breidenbach and Nyíri 2007:322). The geographical sites and material culture that constitute world heritage are further disaggregated by indigenous cultural formations and endemic species, which denote “cultural heritage” and “natural heritage” respectively (Brown 2004:49). By reifying discrete elements of a place, heritage preservation particularizes the homogenizing force of globalization in different geographical locations and brings into metropolitan consumers’ view digital data images and texts about life at the global peripheries. As John Collins (2011) argues, the heritage rubric essentializes nationstates because the intellectual and physical labor of turning places into 140 For est and La bor in Ma dagascar heritage sites produces national identity and thereby transfers control over communal lands or neighborhoods from local communities to the state (Collins 2011:125). National heritages, governed by states, are also elements of a world heritage, their value universalized and subject to the juridical authority of global institutions. Regarding Madagascar’s national natural heritage, for example, Noël Randrianandianina, the director of ANGAP, expressed in an interview with Madagascar Magazine in 1999 that Madagascar’s protected areas are at once “a source of national pride for present and future generations” and a benefit to “all of humanity” due to the high degrees of biodiversity and species endemism (Raony-Le Boubennec 1999:15). Ironically, the prospect of a lucrative tourism industry in Madagascar based on the exchange of its natural heritage appealed to the Malagasy state, but also had its downside . A North American USAID employee in Antananarivo told me in February 2001 that officials feared the “corruption of culture” that came with the growth in international tourism in Madagascar, alluding to the social effects of sex tourism.1 With the “inscription” of a site on UNESCO’s world heritage list, the universal value of certain vestiges of the past manifests as a product of intellectual conservation labor. Collins argues that the distillation of historical processes into essentialized identities, defined as heritage , serves to reseed the ground with the relational dynamics that got us here (at a place where we must salvage heritage) to begin with (Collins 2008:288–289). Heritage preservation is part of an integrated set of initiatives to “valorize value,” as Marx (1977:991) put it, by resignifying the products of historical labor processes and “entic[ing] consumers to participate in the resolution of capitalism’s environmental contradictions through advocacy, charitable giving and consumption” (Igoe et al. 2010:487). The designation of heritage sites and identification of heritage objects abstract and reify social relationships to produce apparently stabilized units of time and space. Around these, social activities proceed. The determination of the criteria of value gravitates toward that which is old and rare. Old age and rarity represent “purer” forms of culture and biology . The degree of an object’s purity derives from its apparent proximity to an original source, making it more authentic. The search for authentic experience motivates international tourists, especially those How the Dead Matter 141 who visit...