Valdimar Tr. Hafstein – författare

Heritage branding and heirloom cultures are twin strategies for building brands in global markets. In this Element, the authors analyze these strategies through skyr; a traditional, sour dairy from Iceland. They explore how live microbial cultures in skyr have been 'heritagized' as heirloom cultures to build a brand advantage. Live skyr cultures, they show, illustrate symbiotic relations over millennia between microbial cultures and human cultures. The industrialization of this species interaction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they argue, ultimately converted a mutualistic relation into a parasitic one. Moreover, they demonstrate a parallel inversion of gender relations in the production and consumption of skyr as part of its industrialization and export. Ironically, these transformations undermine the industry's promotion of the cultures and heritage to which it has effectively put an end. They ask whether there is a more general lesson in this about the relationship between industrialization, capitalism, and heritage.

Heritage branding and heirloom cultures are twin strategies for building brands in global markets. In this Element, the authors analyze these strategies through skyr; a traditional, sour dairy from Iceland. They explore how live microbial cultures in skyr have been 'heritagized' as heirloom cultures to build a brand advantage. Live skyr cultures, they show, illustrate symbiotic relations over millennia between microbial cultures and human cultures. The industrialization of this species interaction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they argue, ultimately converted a mutualistic relation into a parasitic one. Moreover, they demonstrate a parallel inversion of gender relations in the production and consumption of skyr as part of its industrialization and export. Ironically, these transformations undermine the industry's promotion of the cultures and heritage to which it has effectively put an end. They ask whether there is a more general lesson in this about the relationship between industrialization, capitalism, and heritage.

With empirical touchstones from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the authors argue that heritage and property represent different approaches to subject formation, produce distinct bodies of expertise, and belong to different rationalities of government in a global patrimonial field: that cultural property is a technology of sovereignty, part of the order of the modern liberal state, but cultural heritage a technology of reformation that cultivates responsible subjects and entangles them in networks of expertise and management. While particular case trajectories may shift back and forth from rights-based claims and resolutions under the sign of cultural property to ethical claims and solutions under the sign of cultural heritage, the authors contend that there is significant analytical purchase to be gained from their distinction. Using a critical, comparative approach, they make the case for a historically grounded and theoretically informed understanding of the difference between the two terms.

With empirical touchstones from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the authors argue that heritage and property represent different approaches to subject formation, produce distinct bodies of expertise, and belong to different rationalities of government in a global patrimonial field: that cultural property is a technology of sovereignty, part of the order of the modern liberal state, but cultural heritage a technology of reformation that cultivates responsible subjects and entangles them in networks of expertise and management. While particular case trajectories may shift back and forth from rights-based claims and resolutions under the sign of cultural property to ethical claims and solutions under the sign of cultural heritage, the authors contend that there is significant analytical purchase to be gained from their distinction. Using a critical, comparative approach, they make the case for a historically grounded and theoretically informed understanding of the difference between the two terms.