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The Executive discussed
at some length what we could expect WAC
to achieve over the next four years and
into the more distant future. Towards the
end of the discussion, Fekri Hassan was
asked to draft a summary of the debate.
Two members of the Executive also decided
to produce their own document on WAC’s
future objectives. Both documents are produced
below (with minor editorial amendment) for
information and for comment by the wider
membership.
Document
1
Fekri Hassan
Following a discussion
of the reports from Regional/Indigenous
representatives, the main objectives of
WAC for the next 4 years are outlined as
follows in order to facilitate further elaboration
and discussion by the Council and the membership
at large.
WAC’s overarching
objective is seen as the promotion of dialogues
and debates among advocates of different
views of the past, but more importantly
its mission is to open debate and refute
those views, often institutionalized, to
serve the interests of a privileged few
to the detriment of others. The most virulent
of such views have been engendered by the
recent colonial past and sustained by its
aftermath of economic and political inequalities
between and within nations. WAC should be
combating such views and institutional mechanisms
that obliterate, smudge and distort accounts
of the past, and those that marginalize
the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples,
minorities and the poor.
In order to achieve these
primary objectives, WAC should focus on:
- Public Education to raise awareness
and provide communities with accessible
information in order to engage them in
the production of archaeological knowledge.
- Professional Education and Training
in order to enhance the active and effective
participation of archaeologists from communities,
groups, and nations that are at present
severely handicapped and disadvantaged
because of the lack of or inadequacy of
professional human resources and facilities.
- Action Research that addresses issues
relevant to the emancipation, empowerment
and betterment of indigenous groups, minorities,
and the poor, as well as the conservation
of archaeological and other Cultural Heritage.
The themes of action research are designated
as follows.
- Conservation and Appropriate Presentation
of archaeological and cultural resources
especially these threatened by looting
and vandalism, tourism, economic development
projects, urban growth, war and other
conflicts.
- Development Archaeology as a means of
conserving, presenting and managing archaeological
resources to ameliorate the living conditions
of poor and disadvantaged communities.
The long-term conservation of sites must
include developmental programs to sustain
and maintain a healthy environmental milieu.
- Trans-Regional and Regional Societal
Action Projects as a means of dealing
with issues of critical significance to
contemporary societies in a changing global
context. Such issues include, for example,
conflicts over water resources, droughts
and food scarcities, population, ethnic
and sectarian conflicts, nationalism and
identity, and globalisation.
- Action Theories as a means of exploring,
debating, and formulating the ethical
and epistemological theories and philosophies
and principles of archaeological practices.
- ACTION FUNDING at a scale far greater
than is currently available to WAC is
needed if WAC is to become an effective
international medium and in order to fulfil
the objectives outlined above. WAC Charitable
Company can serve as a vehicle for fund-raising,
and WAC should facilitate access to information
on grants and fundraising opportunities
and to assist in submitting proposals
on behalf of those groups that lack the
capacity to do so. WAC should also encourage
trans-regional action projects and seek
funding for such projects.
- Organizational Changes are needed as
WAC assumes a more proactive role in order
to fulfil the above objectives. Such changes,
for example, include:
- The creation of a WAC Central Office.
- The creation of working groups or task
forces to deal with specific issues.
- A revision of the current means of disseminating
information by combining the WAC Newsletter
and WAB in a periodical, that appears
regularly. The new publication can serve
as the forum for the deliberations and
discussions of the working groups. WAC
should also explore new media for the
children, illiterate adults, the media,
teachers and policy makers.
- WAC should also deal effectively with
the problem of communication resulting
from difference in languages among its
membership especially members of the Executive
and Council.
- Support for regional meetings in order
to promote the principles of WAC, increase
membership, and activities within regions,
especially where regional cooperation
and integration is lacking or inadequate.
- Reform the procedures currently in effect
for the participation in the Executive
Committee and the Council. Adequate time
before the elections of WAC officers,
members of the Executive, and Council
should be granted to discuss the candidates’
qualifications and potential contributions
to WAC. Information must reach the membership
no less than four months in advance, and
nominations must be made two months in
advance of elections. Biographical information
should be attached to notices on each
and every candidate. The Regional meetings
can serve as the mechanism by which members
to the Council and the Executive are elected.
Document
2
Yoëlle Carter Martinez
and Maggie Ronayne
In the discussion of the
Executive of WAC on Sunday, 10th of January
1999, a number of future objectives were
proposed for the World Archaeological Congress.
While we agreed with the spirit of many
of these proposals, we felt that there were
a number of matters of substance with which
we could not agree, and other important
issues which we felt had been left out.
Consequently, and in accordance with the
emphasis that we’ve always seen in
WAC itself on debate, we offer the following
additional objectives. We request that this
preamble, and the points listed below, be
added to the previously proposed objectives,
as part of a composite ‘think-piece’
(as Hirini Matunga called it) for the new
officers. We also welcome comments from
the entire membership on these points:
- Recognition that WAC is a heterogeneous
and often conflictive body of interest
groups and political positions which respect
democratic interaction, and that there
is a need for a substantive representation
of these points of difference as well
as points of intersection between people,
in order to have an open debate. For example,
it should be recognised that there are
theories of practice among WAC members
informed by the ways in which those members
are situated socially, not a WAC theory
of practice decided by the Executive.
WAC members may argue about which form
of practice should be appropriate to WAC
- taking positions on the nature of WAC
and attempting to follow them through
with statute revision, resolutions, projects
and so on - but this debate should not
be foreclosed.
- The recognition of these ‘conflictive
conversations’ within WAC, and the
inequalities and power imbalances always
present in them, is vital for WAC’s
future structural organisation. In other
words, we should not view the structure
as an apolitical series of procedures.
Rather, the structure relates directly
to questions of power and representation.
So, we suggest that the structure of the
organisation needs to reflect a more substantial
rather than formal kind of democracy,
with the membership directing debate on,
and decisions about, policy. While we
recognise the financial difficulties which
would follow a move towards regionalization
and wide forms of communication amongst
the membership (in the establishment of
a permanent secretariat or series of them,
for instance), it should be a central
aspiration of WAC to work practically
towards this substantive kind of representation,
step by step. One obvious way of doing
this is through the free WAC publications,
with email discussion lists for those
regions where it is appropriate to do
this at the moment. Added to this might
be a much clearer definition of the role
of regional representatives.
- Another important point, which relates
to this full and frank process of communication,
is language. While fully acknowledging
our fellow Executive members’ comments
on the financial and practical impossibilities
of full translation of the myriad languages
and dialects of the world, we suggest
that this argument should not be used
to stop the effort to ameliorate translation
difficulties in the organisation. After
all, these also have to do with questions
of inequality and power – north/south
divides and so on – and there are
numbers of languages which, owing to processes
of colonisation, are spoken by large numbers
of people all over the world. It should
be a central aspiration of WAC to avoid
disenfranchisement of members, regional
representatives on the Executive and national
representatives on council on the basis
of language problems, if at all possible.
A number of initiatives has been suggested
and some implemented throughout WAC 4.
This debate should continue – in
more than one language - in the pages
of WAC publications in the coming four
years.
- Publications with which this organisation
associates itself or produces are also
ethically and politically governed by
the statutes, codes and accords of WAC
and so are the proper place for these
kinds of debates. But given recent issues
arising (e.g. with the OWA series, relating
to contractual obligations, withdrawal
of papers, publishing of authors linked
to fascist politics, expense of the volumes),
there is a need for a closer concern with
the outcomes of the publications policy
of WAC. Since publication is not an end
in itself but has consequences within
and beyond WAC, there is a need for a
monitoring/advisory committee (which would
consult widely) on the ethical and political
issues relating to all of the WAC and
WAC-associated publications. This could
be integrated with the proposed ongoing
review of, and debate about, revisions
to the statutes and the proper concerns
of WAC.
- We recognise the funding problems that
are ever present with an entity like WAC
and fully support the drive to find sources
of funding which would help the organisation
to expand. However, given the differences
and conflicts we talked about above, we
suggest that those sources of funding
should not be accepted without a consideration
of the effects they might have on full
and frank debate, and on the freedom of
WAC to champion certain issues. Specifically
we urge caution in the application for
NGO status by WAC. The discourse of ‘human
rights’ we would be signing up to,
while it has been used strategically by
some (and we support this use), has been
anything but emancipatory for other groups
of people who are a part of WAC.
- We agree with the other part of this
composite document that there should be
a wider domain of practical action on
the part of WAC members, in implementing
the statutes, code and accords of the
organisation. This could occur through
projects, supported meetings which debate
specific issues like ethics, the politics
of ‘sustainable heritage’, the
effects of tourism and the monitoring
of transnational economic developments
in relation to their effects on people
and the material histories of those people.
The issues change, depending upon the
scale at which we focus our efforts. Rather
than fixing groups of people as ‘the
poor’, ‘women and other minorities’,
‘indigenous’ and so on who are
defined as ‘to be helped’, we
suggest promoting more debate on, and
exposing, through our field projects,
the ways in which the oppression of people
and their pasts are brought about. Seeing
this point through would mean dealing
with how those different oppressions intersect
on local, regional and global stages and
acting to counteract them. This action
would, again, be through our field projects,
through lobbying, through the use of resolutions,
statements of policy and the statutes,
code and accords of WAC to lend support.
The point then becomes the ability of
all of those disenfranchised groups to
speak up for themselves, and struggle
with other representations of the past,
rather than remaining under the control
of a narrowly conceived profession of
archaeology - a more powerful form of
knowledge which seeks to represent them
on its own terms. As a result of this,
we don’t consider it wise that WAC
should be promoted in and for itself –
as though providing a service to a consumer-membership
- but that its members should take on
the responsibility of promoting debate
on these issues.
- Finally, as feminists we note with pleasure
that one of the points the new president
of WAC chose to emphasise, in his identification
of key issues for WAC at council on 11th
of January, 1999, was the rights of women.
We suggest that a full debate now take
place, in the regular WAC publications,
as to how this emphasis can be turned
into practical achievements.
Please send any comments on either of the
above documents to the editor who will pass
them on to Officers and authors. Any comments
or developments will be reported in future
issues of the Bulletin. |
World
Archaeological Bulletin