Cultural Heritage in States of Transition: Authorities, Entrepreneurs and Sound Archives in Ukraine

Abstract

Since Ukraine's independence, a burgeoning private sector has been increasingly encroaching in cultural spaces that previously were conceived of as "property of the state." This dissertation is an ethnographic account of how objects of cultural heritage are being re-configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, it focuses on sound archive field recordings of traditional music and how they are being transformed into cultural commodities. Regarding the jurisdiction of culture - who controls cultural heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and national identity - my research shows how these boundaries are increasingly being negotiated within structures of social, cultural and political power. Thus, culture becomes a contested object between competing ideological systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct repressed histories and to revive former national traditions, on the one hand, and cultural heritage as a creative, future-oriented force to construct new identities in growing consumer marketplaces.