Cultural Heritage Research Journal

The reasons I will change the focus of my thesis topic or choose a new topic

The solutions to the research problem seem not to be realistic

My thesis topic is about the competition and dispute over national belonging of intangible cultural heritage among some UNESCO state parties, and UNESCO’s role in those disputes.

Two months ago, when I proposed this topic, I did not have a piece of detailed information about UNESCO. The only knowledge I came with was about the debates in Armenia and Azerbaijan over “national belonging” of intangible cultural elements such as food, crafts, music when they are inscribed on the UNESCO list. I identified a gap between UNESCO’s mission: on the one hand, it aims at building piece and mutual understanding, as well as acknowledgment of one another's cultural heritage among the member states, on the other hand, some inscriptions intensify competition over national belonging of cultural heritage creating split rather than mutual understanding.

Based on those concerns I was looking for possible solutions. One of them was to suggest UNESCO create a mechanism through which state parties could make joint nominations. However, when I presented the topic for the course about UNESCO, the professor told me that this organization has discussed and adopted the rules for multi-national nominations and inscriptions in the UNESCO list. This information was the first hint that I should study UNESCO better before finding out gaps in its structure.

            Then I began to reshape my research questions: I was thinking to myself “Ok if there is possible to make joint nominations, why countries in dispute (e.g. Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey) have not nominated any ICH as a shared element on the UNESCO list. The discussions with some professors and readings helped me to understand that even though the communities and authorities from both sides would know that they have shared culture, they would not negotiate and make joint nominations because of territorial disputes and lack of diplomatic relations between those countries.

           I was trying to understand UNESCO’s role in this issue. I believed that one of the possible ways for UNESCO to reduce tension and competition over heritage elements could be to encourage joint nominations particularly for countries having territorial disputes. However, after some literature review and consultations with professors, I realized that the local communities and their representative state parties should express willingness and initiate the procedure of joint nominations. UNESCO does not have any obligatory rules, it can just bring states together around some general values and conventions, however, when it comes to practice, UNESCO is not in charge of making the states in dispute collaborate on cultural heritage level. In other words, I realized that cultural heritage and its nominations by state parties have political nature: all in all it is an organization representing states with political authorities who make the final decision.

Lack of access to research data

            Another reason I may change the focus of my research topic is the lack of primary data. Because of no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, moreover due to still existing territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, I can hardly imagine myself doing interviews with the UNESCO representatives of those states.

Another issue is connected to interviewing the representatives of UNESCO. Before I got familiar with this organization, I thought it is possible to have interviews with experts who discuss state nominations. Alas, was disappointed by discovering that this kind of information is not open. UNESCO does not enclose the internal procedure of how the nominations are evaluated, rejected or confirmed. I hope I can have access to the Armenian governmental bodies and UNESCO committee representatives, however, I can not write a thesis with valid statements without the information from the other state parties.

            Thus my research topic is still open to changes until I formulate a feasible research.